stdio transport (MCP)
The stdio transport is one of the ways a Model Context Protocol client and server exchange JSON-RPC messages, using the server process's standard input and standard output streams instead of a network socket. The client spawns the MCP server as a local child process, writes requests to its stdin, and reads responses from its stdout, which works well for a server running on the same machine as the client -- a desktop AI application or IDE integration launching a local tool server, for example -- but can't be used for a server on a different machine, since no network transport is involved at all. MCP's other current transport, Streamable HTTP, replaced an older SSE-based transport and is used instead whenever the client and server aren't on the same host. AdminKit's own adminkit-mcp connector defaults to stdio, with an --http flag available when a remote client needs network access instead.
By AdminKit team, Netbase JSC · Updated