Getting Started With MCP Development in C#

This post is a brief quickstart for building MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers in C# using Visual Studio 2026 (with the MCP project template), with local testing in Open WebUI (a free and open-source AI chat client that you can easily run locally). I’ll show you how to make a simple MCP server with one simple tool, running it, and configuring Open WebUI to make use of it.