MCP Rush — one packet, three gates. Swipe it through the right one.
The Model Context Protocol has a small number of ideas and almost all of the confusion sits in one place: which of the three primitives does this thing belong to? So that is the whole game. A packet runs at an MCP server, a task appears on the sign — Read README.md — and three gates come up the track: Resource, Tool, Prompt. Swipe into the right one and it goes through. Swipe into the wrong one, or leave it until the gates land, and it costs a heart.
Play MCP Rush →Free, and no account needed — play as a guest. Runs in the browser — nothing to install.
Five stages, and they are what make it a runner rather than a quiz. Two things get harder at once: the gates arrive sooner, and the syllabus opens wider — so nobody meets OAuth three gates into their first run.
| Stage | What it teaches | Opens at | Gates arrive in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Handshake | why MCP exists, architecture, client, server | 0 gates | 10.0s |
| 2 · Primitives | resources, tools, prompts | 6 | 9.0s |
| 3 · Back Channel | sampling, roots, transport, authentication | 14 | 8.0s |
| 4 · Surface | MCP apps, tasks, stateful vs stateless | 24 | 7.0s |
| 5 · Production | deploying, running one in production, a whole project | 32 | 6.0s |
A run walks the topics of the stage it has reached, shuffled. Reaching a new stage throws away what was left of the old queue, so the new topics come up straight away rather than waiting behind material you have already cleared.
Three to start. A wrong gate or the barrier takes one; eight clean gates in a row buys one back, up to five. Earning them is the only way to get them, so a heart in hand always means a streak that actually happened.
Resources, tools and prompts are the protocol's three primitives, and the distinction between them is not hard so much as slippery — it is easy to nod along to a definition and then mis-file the first real example you meet. A gate forces the call in the time it takes the packet to reach it, which is exactly the moment the vague understanding falls over. Getting it wrong costs a heart and you are told the answer, so the mis-filing is corrected the second it happens rather than left to set.
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data and capability live — files, APIs, tools. A server exposes resources, tools and prompts; a client consumes them. Stage 1 of the game covers exactly this.
No. Stage 1 starts at why MCP exists at all, and the later stages only open once you have cleared enough gates to have met the earlier ideas.
Yes. Every game on SULULU is free and there is nothing to buy.