How to Build a .NET MCP Client That Connects to and Calls MCP Servers

A developer tutorial on DEV Community explains how to consume Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers from a .NET application, positioning the app itself as the client rather than relying on tools like Claude Desktop. The guide uses the ModelContextProtocol.Core SDK to establish a connection via stdio transport, which launches the MCP server as a child process and performs a protocol handshake. Three core steps are outlined: connecting through a transport layer, discovering available tools and their schemas at runtime, and invoking those tools by name with arguments. The tutorial highlights that runtime tool discovery distinguishes MCP clients from standard API clients, since no pre-generated proxy classes are involved. It also warns developers to properly dispose of the client object to avoid orphaned child processes, and recommends listing available tools before making any calls to avoid debugging mismatched tool names.