You can actually run MCP servers in many different ways. Ultimately, they are just ordinary applications whose task is to make a given tool available via an API compatible with the MCP protocol. The most popular AI IDE tools, such as Cloud Code, Codex, and Cursor, make it easy to run any MCP server. I will take a slightly unusual approach and use the support provided with Docker Desktop, namely the MCP Toolkit.

My idea for today is to build a simple Spring AI application that communicates with MCP servers for GitHub, SonarQube, and CircleCI to retrieve information about my repositories and projects hosted on those platforms. The Docker MCP Toolkit provides a single gateway that distributes incoming requests among running MCP servers. Let’s see how it works in practice!

Source Code

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions. This repository contains several sample applications. The correct application for this article is in the spring-ai-mcp/external-mcp-sample-client directory.

Getting Started with Docker MCP Toolkit

First, run your Docker Desktop. You can find more than 300 popular MCP servers to run in the “Catalog” bookmark. Next, you should search for SonarQube, CircleCI, and GitHub Official servers (note that there are additional GitHub servers). To be honest, I encountered unexpected issues running the CircleCI server, so for now, I based the application on MCP communication with GitHub and SonarCloud.

Each MCP server usually requires configuration, such as your authorization token or service address. Therefore, before adding a server to Docker Toolkit, you must first configure it as described below. Only then should you click the “Add MCP server” button.

For the GitHub MCP server, in addition to entering the token itself, you must also authorize it via OAuth. Here, too, the MCP Toolkit provides graphical support. After entering the token, go to the “OAuth” tab to complete the process.

This is what your final result should look like before moving on to implementing the Spring Boot application. You have added two MCP servers, which together offer 65 tools.

To make both MCP servers available outside of Docker, you need to run the Docker MCP gateway. In the default stdio mode, the API is not exposed outside Docker. Therefore, you need to change the mode to streaming using the transport parameter, as shown below. The gateway is exposed on port 8811.

docker mcp gateway run --port 8811 --transport streaming

docker mcp gateway run --port 8811 --transport streaming

This is what it looks like after launch. Additionally, the Docker MCP gateway is secured by an API token. This will require appropriate settings on the MCP client side in the Spring AI application.

Integrate Spring AI with External MCP Clients

Prepare the MCP Client with Spring AI

Let’s move on to implementing our sample application. We need to include the Spring AI MCP client and the library that communicates with the LLM model. For me, it’s OpenAI, but you can use many other options available through Spring AI’s integration with popular chat models.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-starter-mcp-client-webflux</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-starter-model-openai</artifactId>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-starter-mcp-client-webflux</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-starter-model-openai</artifactId>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Our MCP client must authenticate itself to the Docker MCP gateway using an API token. Therefore, we need to modify the Spring WebClient used by Spring AI to communicate with MCP servers. It is best to use the ExchangeFilterFunction interface to create an HTTP filter that adds the appropriate Authorization header with the bearer token to the outgoing request. The token will be injected from the application properties.

@Component
public class McpSyncClientExchangeFilterFunction implements ExchangeFilterFunction {

    @Value("${mcp.token}")
    private String token;

    @Override
    public Mono<ClientResponse> filter(ClientRequest request, 
                                       ExchangeFunction next) {

            var requestWithToken = ClientRequest.from(request)
                    .headers(headers -> headers.setBearerAuth(token))
                    .build();
            return next.exchange(requestWithToken);

    }

}

@Component
public class McpSyncClientExchangeFilterFunction implements ExchangeFilterFunction {

    @Value("${mcp.token}")
    private String token;

    @Override
    public Mono<ClientResponse> filter(ClientRequest request, 
                                       ExchangeFunction next) {

            var requestWithToken = ClientRequest.from(request)
                    .headers(headers -> headers.setBearerAuth(token))
                    .build();
            return next.exchange(requestWithToken);

    }

}

Then, let’s set the previously implemented filter for the default WebClient builder.

@SpringBootApplication
public class ExternalMcpSampleClient {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(ExternalMcpSampleClient.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    WebClient.Builder webClientBuilder(McpSyncClientExchangeFilterFunction filterFunction) {
        return WebClient.builder()
                .filter(filterFunction);
    }
}

@SpringBootApplication
public class ExternalMcpSampleClient {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(ExternalMcpSampleClient.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    WebClient.Builder webClientBuilder(McpSyncClientExchangeFilterFunction filterFunction) {
        return WebClient.builder()
                .filter(filterFunction);
    }
}

After that, we must configure the MCP gateway address and token in the application properties. To achieve that, we must use the spring.ai.mcp.client.streamable-http.connections property. The MCP gateway listens on port 8811. The token value will be read from the MCP_TOKEN environment variable.

spring.ai.mcp.client.streamable-http.connections:
  docker-mcp-gateway:
    url: http://localhost:8811

mcp.token: ${MCP_TOKEN}

spring.ai.mcp.client.streamable-http.connections:
  docker-mcp-gateway:
    url: http://localhost:8811

mcp.token: ${MCP_TOKEN}

Implement Application Logic with Spring AI and OpenAI Support

The concept behind the sample application is quite simple. It involves creating a @RestController per tool provided by each MCP server. For each, I will create a simple prompt to request the number of repositories or projects in my account on a given platform. Let’s start with SonCloud. Each implementation uses the Spring AI ToolCallbackProvider bean to enable the available MCP server to communicate with the LLM model.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/sonarcloud")
public class SonarCloudController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(SonarCloudController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public SonarCloudController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                                ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many projects in Sonarcloud do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/sonarcloud")
public class SonarCloudController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(SonarCloudController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public SonarCloudController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                                ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many projects in Sonarcloud do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

Below is a very similar implementation for GitHub MCP. This controller is exposed under the /github context path.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/github")
public class GitHubController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(GitHubController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public GitHubController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many repositories in GitHub do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/github")
public class GitHubController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(GitHubController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public GitHubController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many repositories in GitHub do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

Finally, there is the controller implementation for CircleCI MCP. It is available externally under the /circleci context path.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/circleci")
public class CircleCIController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(CircleCIController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public CircleCIController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                              ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many projects in CircleCI do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/circleci")
public class CircleCIController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(CircleCIController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public CircleCIController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                              ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count")
    String countRepositories() {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many projects in CircleCI do I have ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create();
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

The last controller implementation is a bit more complex. First, I need to instruct the LLM model to generate project names in SonarQube and specify my GitHub username. This will not be part of the main prompt. Rather, it will be the system role, which guides the AI’s behavior and response style. Therefore, I’ll create the SystemPromptTemplate first. The user role prompt accepts an input parameter specifying the name of my GitHub repository. The response should combine data on the last commit in a given repository with the status of the most recent SonarQube analysis. In this case, the LLM will need to communicate with two MCP servers running with Docker MCP simultaneously.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/global")
public class GlobalController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(CircleCIController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public GlobalController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/status/{repo}")
    String repoStatus(@PathVariable String repo) {
        SystemPromptTemplate st = new SystemPromptTemplate("""
                My username in GitHub is piomin.
                Each my project key in SonarCloud contains the prefix with my organization name and _ char.
                """);
        var stMsg = st.createMessage();

        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                When was the last commit made in my GitHub repository {repo} ?
                What is the latest analyze status in SonarCloud for that repo ?
                """);
        var usMsg = pt.createMessage(Map.of("repo", repo));

        Prompt prompt = new Prompt(List.of(usMsg, stMsg));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(prompt)
                .call()
                .content();
    }
}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/global")
public class GlobalController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(CircleCIController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public GlobalController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultToolCallbacks(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/status/{repo}")
    String repoStatus(@PathVariable String repo) {
        SystemPromptTemplate st = new SystemPromptTemplate("""
                My username in GitHub is piomin.
                Each my project key in SonarCloud contains the prefix with my organization name and _ char.
                """);
        var stMsg = st.createMessage();

        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                When was the last commit made in my GitHub repository {repo} ?
                What is the latest analyze status in SonarCloud for that repo ?
                """);
        var usMsg = pt.createMessage(Map.of("repo", repo));

        Prompt prompt = new Prompt(List.of(usMsg, stMsg));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(prompt)
                .call()
                .content();
    }
}

Before running the app, we must set two required environment variables that contain the OpenAI and Docker MCP gateway tokens.

export MCP_TOKEN=by1culxc6sctmycxtyl9xh7499mb8pctbsdb3brha1hvmm4d8l
export SPRING_AI_OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPEN_AI_TOKEN>

export MCP_TOKEN=by1culxc6sctmycxtyl9xh7499mb8pctbsdb3brha1hvmm4d8l
export SPRING_AI_OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPEN_AI_TOKEN>

Finally, we can run our Spring Boot app with the following command.

mvn spring-boot:run

mvn spring-boot:run

Firstly, I’m going to ask about the number of my GitHub repositories.

curl http://localhost:8080/github/count

curl http://localhost:8080/github/count

Then, I can check the number of projects in my SonarCloud account.

curl http://localhost:8080/github/sonarcloud

curl http://localhost:8080/github/sonarcloud

Finally, I can choose a specific repository and verify the last commit and the current analysis status in SonarCloud.

curl http://localhost:8080/global/status/sample-spring-boot-kafka

curl http://localhost:8080/global/status/sample-spring-boot-kafka

Here’s the LLM answer for my sample-spring-boot-kafka repository. You can perform the same exercise for your repositories and projects.

Conclusion

Spring AI, combined with the MCP client, opens a powerful path toward building truly tool-aware AI applications. By using the Docker MCP Gateway, we can easily host and manage MCP servers such as GitHub or SonarQube consistently and reproducibly, without tightly coupling them to our application runtime. Docker provides a user-friendly interface for managing MCP servers, giving users access to everything through a single MCP gateway. This approach appears to have advantages, particularly during application development.

The post Spring AI with External MCP Servers appeared first on Piotr's TechBlog.

This article is the second part of a series describing some of the Quarkus AI project’s most notable features.  Before reading this article, I recommend checking out two previous parts of the tutorial:

• Part 1: Getting Started with Quarkus LangChain4j and Chat Model
• Part 2: AI Tool Calling with Quarkus LangChain4j

You can also compare Quarkus’ support for MCP with similar support on the Spring AI side. You can find the article I mentioned on my blog here.

Source Code

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions.

Architecture for the Quarkus MCP Scenario

Let’s start with a diagram of our application architecture. Two Quarkus applications act as MCP servers. They connect to the in-memory database and use Quarkus LangChain4j MCP Server support to expose @Tool methods to the MCP client-side app. The client-side app communicates with the OpenAI model. It includes the tools exposed by the server-side apps in the user query to the AI model. The person-mcp-server app provides @Tool methods for searching persons in the database table. The account-mcp-server is doing the same for the persons’ accounts.

Build an MCP Server with Quarkus

Both MCP server applications are similar. They connect to the H2 database via the Quarkus Panache ORM extension. Both provide MCP API via Server-Sent Events (SSE) transport. Here’s a list of required Maven dependencies:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.mcp</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-mcp-server-sse</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-hibernate-orm-panache</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-jdbc-h2</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-junit5</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.mcp</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-mcp-server-sse</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-hibernate-orm-panache</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-jdbc-h2</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-junit5</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Let’s start with the person-mcp-server application. Here’s the @Entity class for interacting with the person table. It uses Panache support to avoid the need for getter and setter declarations.

@Entity
public class Person extends PanacheEntityBase {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long id;
    public String firstName;
    public String lastName;
    public int age;
    public String nationality;
    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    public Gender gender;

}

@Entity
public class Person extends PanacheEntityBase {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long id;
    public String firstName;
    public String lastName;
    public int age;
    public String nationality;
    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    public Gender gender;

}

The PersonRepository class contains a single method for searching persons by their nationality:

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonRepository implements PanacheRepository<Person> {

    public List<Person> findByNationality(String nationality) {
        return find("nationality", nationality).list();
    }

}

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonRepository implements PanacheRepository<Person> {

    public List<Person> findByNationality(String nationality) {
        return find("nationality", nationality).list();
    }

}

Next, prepare the “tools service” that searches for a single person by ID or a list of people of a given nationality in the database. Each method must be annotated with @Tool and include a description in the description field. Quarkus LangChain4j does not allow a Java List to be returned, so we need to wrap it using a dedicated Persons object.

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonTools {

    PersonRepository personRepository;

    public PersonTools(PersonRepository personRepository) {
        this.personRepository = personRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find person by ID")
    public Person getPersonById(
            @ToolArg(description = "Person ID") Long id) {
        return personRepository.findById(id);
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all persons by nationality")
    public Persons getPersonsByNationality(
            @ToolArg(description = "Nationality") String nationality) {
        return new Persons(personRepository.findByNationality(nationality));
    }
}

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonTools {

    PersonRepository personRepository;

    public PersonTools(PersonRepository personRepository) {
        this.personRepository = personRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find person by ID")
    public Person getPersonById(
            @ToolArg(description = "Person ID") Long id) {
        return personRepository.findById(id);
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all persons by nationality")
    public Persons getPersonsByNationality(
            @ToolArg(description = "Nationality") String nationality) {
        return new Persons(personRepository.findByNationality(nationality));
    }
}

Here’s our List<Person> wrapper:

public class Persons {

    private List<Person> persons;

    public Persons(List<Person> persons) {
        this.persons = persons;
    }

    public List<Person> getPersons() {
        return persons;
    }

    public void setPersons(List<Person> persons) {
        this.persons = persons;
    }
}

public class Persons {

    private List<Person> persons;

    public Persons(List<Person> persons) {
        this.persons = persons;
    }

    public List<Person> getPersons() {
        return persons;
    }

    public void setPersons(List<Person> persons) {
        this.persons = persons;
    }
}

The implementation of the account-mcp-server application is essentially very similar. Here’s the @Entity class for interacting with the account table. It uses Panache support to avoid the need for getter and setter declarations.

@Entity
public class Account extends PanacheEntityBase {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long id;
    public String number;
    public int balance;
    public Long personId;

}

@Entity
public class Account extends PanacheEntityBase {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    public Long id;
    public String number;
    public int balance;
    public Long personId;

}

The AccountRepository class contains a single method for searching accounts by person ID:

@ApplicationScoped
public class AccountRepository implements PanacheRepository<Account> {

    public List<Account> findByPersonId(Long personId) {
        return find("personId", personId).list();
    }

}

@ApplicationScoped
public class AccountRepository implements PanacheRepository<Account> {

    public List<Account> findByPersonId(Long personId) {
        return find("personId", personId).list();
    }

}

Once again, the list inside the “tools service” must be wrapped by the dedicated object. The single method annotated with @Tool returns a list of accounts assigned to a given person.

@ApplicationScoped
public class AccountTools {

    AccountRepository accountRepository;

    public AccountTools(AccountRepository accountRepository) {
        this.accountRepository = accountRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all accounts by person ID")
    public Accounts getAccountsByPersonId(
            @ToolArg(description = "Person ID") Long personId) {
        return new Accounts(accountRepository.findByPersonId(personId));
    }

}

@ApplicationScoped
public class AccountTools {

    AccountRepository accountRepository;

    public AccountTools(AccountRepository accountRepository) {
        this.accountRepository = accountRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all accounts by person ID")
    public Accounts getAccountsByPersonId(
            @ToolArg(description = "Person ID") Long personId) {
        return new Accounts(accountRepository.findByPersonId(personId));
    }

}

The person-mcp-server starts on port 8082, while the account-mcp-server listens on port 8081. To change the default HTTP, use the quarkus.http.port property in your application.properties file.

Build an MCP Client with Quarkus

Our application interacts with the OpenAI chat model, so we must include the Quarkus LangChain4j OpenAI extension. In turn, to integrate the client-side application with MCP-compliant servers, we need to include the quarkus-langchain4j-mcp extension.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-rest-jackson</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-openai</artifactId>
    <version>${quarkus.langchain4j.version}</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-mcp</artifactId>
    <version>${quarkus.langchain4j.version}</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-rest-jackson</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-openai</artifactId>
    <version>${quarkus.langchain4j.version}</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-mcp</artifactId>
    <version>${quarkus.langchain4j.version}</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

The sample-client Quarkus app interacts with both the person-mcp-server app and the account-mcp-server app. Therefore, it defines two AI services. As with a standard AI application in Quarkus, those services must be annotated with @RegisterAiService. Then we define methods and prompt templates, also with annotations @UserMessage or @SystemMessage. If a given method is to use one of the MCP servers, it must be annotated with @McpToolBox. The name inside the annotation corresponds to the MCP server name set in the configuration properties. The PersonService AI service visible below uses the person-service MCP server.

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface PersonService {

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @UserMessage("""
        Find persons with {nationality} nationality.
        Output **only valid JSON**, no explanations, no markdown, no ```json blocks.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    Persons findByNationality(String nationality);

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @UserMessage("How many persons come from {nationality} ?")
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    int countByNationality(String nationality);

}

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface PersonService {

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @UserMessage("""
        Find persons with {nationality} nationality.
        Output **only valid JSON**, no explanations, no markdown, no ```json blocks.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    Persons findByNationality(String nationality);

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @UserMessage("How many persons come from {nationality} ?")
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    int countByNationality(String nationality);

}

The AI service shown above corresponds to this configuration. You need to specify the MCP server’s name and address. As you remember, person-mcp-server listens on port 8082. The client application uses the name person-service here, and the standard endpoint to MCP SSE for Quarkus is /mcp/sse. To explore the solution itself, it is also worth enabling logging of MCP requests and responses.

quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.transport-type = http
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.url = http://localhost:8082/mcp/sse
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.log-responses = true

quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.transport-type = http
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.url = http://localhost:8082/mcp/sse
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.person-service.log-responses = true

Here is a similar implementation for the AccountService AI service. It interacts with the MCP server configured under the account-service name.

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface AccountService {

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic data.
        Return a single number.
        """)
    @UserMessage("How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?")
    @McpToolBox("account-service")
    int countByPersonId(int personId);

    @UserMessage("""
        How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?
        Return person name, nationality and a total balance on his/her accounts.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("account-service")
    String balanceByPersonId(int personId);

}

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface AccountService {

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic data.
        Return a single number.
        """)
    @UserMessage("How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?")
    @McpToolBox("account-service")
    int countByPersonId(int personId);

    @UserMessage("""
        How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?
        Return person name, nationality and a total balance on his/her accounts.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("account-service")
    String balanceByPersonId(int personId);

}

Here’s the corresponding configuration for that service. No surprises.

quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.transport-type = http
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.url = http://localhost:8081/mcp/sse
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.log-responses = true

quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.transport-type = http
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.url = http://localhost:8081/mcp/sse
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.mcp.account-service.log-responses = true

Finally, we must provide some configuration to integrate our Quarkus application with Open AI chat model. It assumes that Open AI token is available as the OPEN_AI_TOKEN environment variable.

quarkus.langchain4j.chat-model.provider = openai
quarkus.langchain4j.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.log-responses = true
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.api-key = ${OPEN_AI_TOKEN}
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.timeout = 20s

quarkus.langchain4j.chat-model.provider = openai
quarkus.langchain4j.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.log-responses = true
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.api-key = ${OPEN_AI_TOKEN}
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.timeout = 20s

We can test individual AI services by calling endpoints provided by the client-side application. There are two endpoints GET /count-by-person-id/{personId} and GET /balance-by-person-id/{personId} that use LLM prompts to calculate number of persons and a total balances amount of all accounts belonging to a given person.

@Path("/accounts")
public class AccountResource {

    private final AccountService accountService;

    public AccountResource(AccountService accountService) {
        this.accountService = accountService;
    }

    @POST
    @Path("/count-by-person-id/{personId}")
    public int countByPersonId(int personId) {
        return accountService.countByPersonId(personId);
    }

    @POST
    @Path("/balance-by-person-id/{personId}")
    public String balanceByPersonId(int personId) {
        return accountService.balanceByPersonId(personId);
    }

}

@Path("/accounts")
public class AccountResource {

    private final AccountService accountService;

    public AccountResource(AccountService accountService) {
        this.accountService = accountService;
    }

    @POST
    @Path("/count-by-person-id/{personId}")
    public int countByPersonId(int personId) {
        return accountService.countByPersonId(personId);
    }

    @POST
    @Path("/balance-by-person-id/{personId}")
    public String balanceByPersonId(int personId) {
        return accountService.balanceByPersonId(personId);
    }

}

MCP for Promps

MCP servers can also provide other functionalities beyond just tools. Let’s go back to the person-mcp-server app for a moment. To share a prompt message, you can create a class that defines methods returning the PromptMessage object. Then, we must annotate such methods with @Prompt, and their arguments with @PromptArg.

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonPrompts {

    final String findByNationalityPrompt = """
        Find persons with {nationality} nationality.
        Output **only valid JSON**, no explanations, no markdown, no ```json blocks.
        """;

    @Prompt(description = "Find by nationality.")
    PromptMessage findByNationalityPrompt(@PromptArg(description = "The nationality") String nationality) {
        return PromptMessage.withUserRole(new TextContent(findByNationalityPrompt));
    }

}

@ApplicationScoped
public class PersonPrompts {

    final String findByNationalityPrompt = """
        Find persons with {nationality} nationality.
        Output **only valid JSON**, no explanations, no markdown, no ```json blocks.
        """;

    @Prompt(description = "Find by nationality.")
    PromptMessage findByNationalityPrompt(@PromptArg(description = "The nationality") String nationality) {
        return PromptMessage.withUserRole(new TextContent(findByNationalityPrompt));
    }

}

Once we start the application, we can use Quarkus Dev UI to verify a list of provided tools and prompts.

Client-side integration with MCP prompts is a bit more complex than with tools. We must inject the McpClient to a resource controller to load a given prompt programmatically using its name.

@Path("/persons")
public class PersonResource {

    @McpClientName("person-service")
    McpClient mcpClient;
    
    // OTHET METHODS...
    
    @POST
    @Path("/nationality-with-prompt/{nationality}")
    public List<Person> findByNationalityWithPrompt(String nationality) {
        Persons p = personService.findByNationalityWithPrompt(loadPrompt(nationality), nationality);
        return p.getPersons();
    }
    
    private String loadPrompt(String nationality) {
        McpGetPromptResult prompt = mcpClient.getPrompt("findByNationalityPrompt", Map.of("nationality", nationality));
        return ((TextContent) prompt.messages().getFirst().content().toContent()).text();
    }
}

@Path("/persons")
public class PersonResource {

    @McpClientName("person-service")
    McpClient mcpClient;
    
    // OTHET METHODS...
    
    @POST
    @Path("/nationality-with-prompt/{nationality}")
    public List<Person> findByNationalityWithPrompt(String nationality) {
        Persons p = personService.findByNationalityWithPrompt(loadPrompt(nationality), nationality);
        return p.getPersons();
    }
    
    private String loadPrompt(String nationality) {
        McpGetPromptResult prompt = mcpClient.getPrompt("findByNationalityPrompt", Map.of("nationality", nationality));
        return ((TextContent) prompt.messages().getFirst().content().toContent()).text();
    }
}

In this case, the Quarkus AI service should not define the @UserMessage on the entire method, but just as the method argument. Then a prompt message is loaded from the MCP server and filled with the nationality parameter value before sending to the AI model.

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface PersonService {

    // OTHER METHODS...
    
    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    Persons findByNationalityWithPrompt(@UserMessage String userMessage, String nationality);

}

@ApplicationScoped
@RegisterAiService
public interface PersonService {

    // OTHER METHODS...
    
    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @McpToolBox("person-service")
    Persons findByNationalityWithPrompt(@UserMessage String userMessage, String nationality);

}

Testing MCP Tools with Quarkus

Quarkus provides a dedicated module for testing MCP tools. We can use after including the following dependency in the Maven pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.quarkiverse.mcp</groupId>
  <artifactId>quarkus-mcp-server-test</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.quarkiverse.mcp</groupId>
  <artifactId>quarkus-mcp-server-test</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

The following test verifies the MCP tool methods provided by the person-mcp-server application. The McpAssured class allows us to use SSE, streamable, and WebSocket test clients. To create a new client for SSE, invoke the newConnectedSseClient() static method. After that, we can use one of several available variants of the toolsCall(...) method to verify the response returned by a given @Tool.

@QuarkusTest
public class PersonToolsTest {

    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

    @Test
    public void testGetPersonsByNationality() {
        McpAssured.McpSseTestClient client = McpAssured.newConnectedSseClient();
        client.when()
                .toolsCall("getPersonsByNationality", Map.of("nationality", "Denmark"),
                        r -> {
                            try {
                                Persons p = mapper.readValue(r.content().getFirst().asText().text(), Persons.class);
                                assertFalse(p.getPersons().isEmpty());
                            } catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
                                throw new RuntimeException(e);
                            }
                        })
                .thenAssertResults();
    }

    @Test
    public void testGetPersonById() {
        McpAssured.McpSseTestClient client = McpAssured.newConnectedSseClient();
        client.when()
                .toolsCall("getPersonById", Map.of("id", 10),
                        r -> {
                            try {
                                Person p = mapper.readValue(r.content().getFirst().asText().text(), Person.class);
                                assertNotNull(p);
                                assertNotNull(p.id);
                            } catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
                                throw new RuntimeException(e);
                            }
                        })
                .thenAssertResults();
    }
}

@QuarkusTest
public class PersonToolsTest {

    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

    @Test
    public void testGetPersonsByNationality() {
        McpAssured.McpSseTestClient client = McpAssured.newConnectedSseClient();
        client.when()
                .toolsCall("getPersonsByNationality", Map.of("nationality", "Denmark"),
                        r -> {
                            try {
                                Persons p = mapper.readValue(r.content().getFirst().asText().text(), Persons.class);
                                assertFalse(p.getPersons().isEmpty());
                            } catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
                                throw new RuntimeException(e);
                            }
                        })
                .thenAssertResults();
    }

    @Test
    public void testGetPersonById() {
        McpAssured.McpSseTestClient client = McpAssured.newConnectedSseClient();
        client.when()
                .toolsCall("getPersonById", Map.of("id", 10),
                        r -> {
                            try {
                                Person p = mapper.readValue(r.content().getFirst().asText().text(), Person.class);
                                assertNotNull(p);
                                assertNotNull(p.id);
                            } catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
                                throw new RuntimeException(e);
                            }
                        })
                .thenAssertResults();
    }
}

Running Quarkus Applications

Finally, let’s run all our quarkus applications. Go to the mcp/account-mcp-server directory and run the application in development mode:

$ cd mcp/account-mcp-server
$ mvn quarkus:dev

$ cd mcp/account-mcp-server
$ mvn quarkus:dev

Then do the same for the person-mcp-server application.

$ cd mcp/person-mcp-server
$ mvn quarkus:dev

$ cd mcp/person-mcp-server
$ mvn quarkus:dev

Before running the last sample-client application, export the OpenAI API token as the OPEN_AI_TOKEN environment variable.

$ cd mcp/sample-client
$ export OPEN_AI_TOKEN=<YOUR_OPENAI_TOKEN>
$ mvn quarkus:dev

$ cd mcp/sample-client
$ export OPEN_AI_TOKEN=<YOUR_OPENAI_TOKEN>
$ mvn quarkus:dev

We can verify a list of tools or prompts exposed by each MCP server application by visiting its Quarkus Dev UI console. It provides a dedicated “MCP Server tile.”

Here’s a list of tools provided by the person-mcp-server app via Quarkus Dev UI.

Then, we can switch to the sample-client Dev UI console. We can verify and test all interactions with the MCP servers from our client-side app.

Once all the sample applications are running, we can test the MCP communication by calling the HTTP endpoints exposed by the sample-client app. Both person-mcp-server and account-mcp-server load some test data on startup using the import.sql file. Here are the test API calls for all the REST endpoints.

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/nationality/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/count-by-nationality/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/nationality-with-prompt/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/accounts/count-by-person-id/2
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/accounts/balance-by-person-id/2

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/nationality/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/count-by-nationality/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/persons/nationality-with-prompt/Denmark
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/accounts/count-by-person-id/2
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/accounts/balance-by-person-id/2

Conclusion

With Quarkus, creating applications that use MCP is not difficult. If you understand the idea of tool calling in AI, understanding the MCP-based approach is not difficult for you. This article shows you how to connect your application to several MCP servers, implement tests to verify the elements shared by a given application using MCP, and support on the Quarkus Dev UI side.

The post MCP with Quarkus LangChain4j appeared first on Piotr's TechBlog.

If you like Quarkus, then you can find quite a few articles about it on my blog. Just go to the Quarkus category and find the topic you are interested in.

SourceCode

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions.

Motivation

Whenever I create a new article or example related to AI, I like to define the problem I’m trying to solve. The problem this example solves is very trivial. I publish numerous small demo apps to explain complex technology concepts. These apps typically require data to display a demo output. Usually, I add demo data by myself or use a library like Datafaker to do it for me. This time, we can leverage the AI Chat Models API for that. Let’s begin!

The Quarkus-related topic I’m describing today, I also explained earlier for Spring Boot. For a comparison of the features offered by both frameworks for simple interaction with the AI chat model, you can read this article on Spring AI.

Dependencies

The sample application uses the current latest version of the Quarkus framework.

<dependencyManagement>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>io.quarkus.platform</groupId>
      <artifactId>quarkus-bom</artifactId>
      <version>${quarkus.platform.version}</version>
      <type>pom</type>
      <scope>import</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

You can easily switch between multiple AI model implementations by activating a dedicated Maven profile. By default, the open-ai profile is active. It includes the quarkus-langchain4j-openai module in the Maven dependencies. You can also activate the mistral-ai and ollama profile. In that case, the quarkus-langchain4j-mistral-ai or quarkus-langchain4j-ollama module will be included instead of the LangChain4j OpenAI extension.

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>open-ai</id>
    <activation>
      <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
    </activation>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-openai</artifactId>
        <version>${quarkus-langchain4j.version}</version>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>mistral-ai</id>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-mistral-ai</artifactId>
        <version>${quarkus-langchain4j.version}</version>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>ollama</id>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>io.quarkiverse.langchain4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>quarkus-langchain4j-ollama</artifactId>
        <version>${quarkus-langchain4j.version}</version>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </profile>
</profiles>

The sample Quarkus application is simple. It exposes some REST endpoints and communicates with a selected AI model to return an AI-generated response via each endpoint. So, you need to include only core Quarkus modules like quarkus-rest-jackson or quarkus-arc. To implement JUnit tests with REST API, it also includes the quarkus-junit5 and rest-assured modules in the test scope.

<dependencies>
  <!-- Core Quarkus dependencies -->
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-rest-jackson</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-arc</artifactId>
  </dependency>

  <!-- Test dependencies -->
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-junit5</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.rest-assured</groupId>
    <artifactId>rest-assured</artifactId>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Quarkus LangChain4j Chat Models Integration

Quarkus provides an innovative approach to interacting with AI chat models. First, you need to annotate your interface by defining AI-oriented methods with the @RegisterAiService annotation. Then you must add a proper description and input prompt inside the @SystemMessage and @UserMessage annotations. Here is the sample PersonAiService interaction, which defines two methods. The generatePersonList method aims to ask the AI model to generate a list of 10 unique persons in a form consistent with the input object structure. The getPersonById method must read the previously generated list from chat memory and return a person’s data with a specified id field.

@RegisterAiService
@ApplicationScoped
public interface PersonAiService {

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that generates realistic person data.
        Always respond with valid JSON format.
        """)
    @UserMessage("""
        Generate exactly 10 unique persons

        Requirements:
        - Each person must have a unique integer ID (like 1, 2, 3, etc.)
        - Use realistic first and last names per each nationality
        - Ages should be between 18 and 80
        - Return ONLY the JSON array, no additional text
        """)
    PersonResponse generatePersonList(@MemoryId int userId);

    @SystemMessage("""
        You are a helpful assistant that can recall generated person data from chat memory.
        """)
    @UserMessage("""
        In the previously generated list of persons for user {userId}, find and return the person with id {id}.
        
        Return ONLY the JSON object, no additional text.
        """)
    Person getPersonById(@MemoryId int userId, int id);

}

There are a few more things to add regarding the code snippet above. The beans created by @RegisterAiService are @RequestScoped by default. The Quarkus LangChain4j documentation states that this is possible, allowing objects to be deleted from the chat memory. In the case seen above, the list of people is generated per user ID, which acts as the key by which we search the chat memory. To guarantee that the getPersonById method finds a list of persons generated per @MemoryId the PersonAiService interface must be annotated with @ApplicationScoped. The InMemoryChatMemoryStore implementation is enabled by default, so you don’t need to declare any additional beans to use it.

Quarkus LangChain4j can automatically map the LLM’s JSON response to the output POJO. However, until now, it has not been possible to map it directly to the output collection. Therefore, you must wrap the output list with the additional class, as shown below.

public class PersonResponse {

    private List<Person> persons;

    public List<Person> getPersons() {
        return persons;
    }

    public void setPersons(List<Person> persons) {
        this.persons = persons;
    }
}

Here’s the Person class:

public class Person {

    private Integer id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    private int age;
    private String nationality;
    private Gender gender;
    
    // GETTERS and SETTERS

}

Finally, the last part of our implementation is REST endpoints. Here’s the REST controller that injects and uses PersonAiService to interact with the AI chat model. It exposes two endpoints: GET /api/{userId}/persons and GET /api/{userId}/persons/{id}. You can generate several lists of persons by specifying the userId path parameter.

@Path("/api")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
@Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public class PersonController {

    private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getLogger(PersonController.class);

    PersonAiService personAiService;

    public PersonController(PersonAiService personAiService) {
        this.personAiService = personAiService;
    }

    @GET
    @Path("/{userId}/persons")
    public PersonResponse generatePersons(@PathParam("userId") int userId) {
        return personAiService.generatePersonList(userId);
    }

    @GET
    @Path("/{userId}/persons/{id}")
    public Person getPersonById(@PathParam("userId") int userId, @PathParam("id") int id) {
        return personAiService.getPersonById(userId, id);
    }

}

Use Different AI Models with Quarkus LangChain4j

Configuration Properties

Here is a configuration defined within the application.properties file. Before proceeding, you must generate the OpenAI and Mistral AI API tokens and export them as environment variables. Additionally, you can enable logging of requests and responses in AI model communication. It is also worth increasing the default timeout for a single request from 10 seconds to a higher value, such as 20 seconds.

quarkus.langchain4j.chat-model.provider = ${AI_MODEL_PROVIDER:openai}
quarkus.langchain4j.log-requests = true
quarkus.langchain4j.log-responses = true

# OpenAI Configuration
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.api-key = ${OPEN_AI_TOKEN}
quarkus.langchain4j.openai.timeout = 20s

# Mistral AI Configuration
quarkus.langchain4j.mistralai.api-key = ${MISTRAL_AI_TOKEN}
quarkus.langchain4j.mistralai.timeout = 20s

# Ollama Configuration
quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.base-url = ${OLLAMA_BASE_URL:http://localhost:11434}

To run a sample Quarkus application and connect it with OpenAI, you must set the OPEN_AI_TOKEN environment variable. Since the open-ai Maven profile is activated by default, you don’t need to set anything else while running an app.

$ export OPEN_AI_TOKEN=<your_openai_token>
$ mvn quarkus:dev

Then, you can call the GET /api/{userId}/persons endpoint with different userId path variable values. Here are sample API requests and responses.

After that, you can call the GET /api/{userId}/persons/{id} endpoint to return a specified person found in the chat memory.

Switch Between AI Models

Then, you can repeat the same exercise with the Mistral AI model. You must set the AI_MODEL_PROVIDER to mistral, export its API token as the MISTRAL_AI_TOKEN environment variable, and enable the mistral-ai profile while running the app.

$ export AI_MODEL_PROVIDER=mistralai
$ export MISTRAL_AI_TOKEN=<your_mistralai_token>
$ mvn quarkus:dev -Pmistral-ai

The app should start successfully.

Once it happens, you can repeat the same sequence of requests as before for OpenAI.

$ curl http://localhost:8080/api/1/persons
$ curl http://localhost:8080/api/2/persons
$ curl http://localhost:8080/api/1/persons/1
$ curl http://localhost:8080/api/2/persons/1

You can check the request sent to the AI model in the application logs.

Here’s a log showing an AI chat model response:

Finally, you can run a test with ollama. By default, the LangChain4j extension for Ollama uses the llama3.2 model. You can change it by setting the quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.chat-model.model-id property in the application.properties file. Assuming that you use the llama3.3 model, here’s your configuration:

quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.base-url = ${OLLAMA_BASE_URL:http://localhost:11434}
quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.chat-model.model-id = llama3.3
quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.timeout = 60s

Before proceeding, you must run the llama3.3 model on your laptop. Of course, you can choose another, smaller model, because llama3.3 is 42 GB.

ollama run llama3.3

It can take a lot of time. However, a model is finally ready to use.

Once a model is running, you can set the AI_MODEL_PROVIDER environment variable to ollama and activate the ollama profile for the app:

$ export AI_MODEL_PROVIDER=ollama
$ mvn quarkus:dev -Pollama

This time, our application is connected to the llama3.3 model started with ollama:

With the Quarkus LangChain4j Ollama extension, you can take advantage of dev services support. It means that you don’t need to install and run Ollama on your laptop or run a model with ollama CLI. Quarkus will run Ollama as a Docker container and automatically run a selected AI model on it. In that case, you don’t need to set the quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.base-url property. Before switching to that option, let’s use a smaller AI model by setting the quarkus.langchain4j.ollama.chat-model.model-id = mistral property. Then start the app in the same way as before.

Final Thoughts

I must admit that the Quarkus LangChain4j extension is enjoyable to use. With a few simple annotations, you can configure your application to talk to the AI model of your choice correctly. In this article, I presented a straightforward example of integrating Quarkus with an AI chat model. However, we quickly reviewed features such as prompts, structured output, and chat memory. You can expect more articles in the Quarkus series with AI soon.

The post Getting Started with Quarkus LangChain4j and Chat Model appeared first on Piotr's TechBlog.

This is the seventh part of my series of articles about Spring Boot and AI. It is worth reading the following posts before proceeding with the current one. Please pay special attention to the last article from the list about the tool calling feature since we will implement it in our sample client and server apps using MCP.

1. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/01/28/getting-started-with-spring-ai-and-chat-model: The first tutorial introduces the Spring AI project and its support for building applications based on chat models like OpenAI or Mistral AI.
2. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/01/30/getting-started-with-spring-ai-function-calling: The second tutorial shows Spring AI support for Java function calling with the OpenAI chat model.
3. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/02/24/using-rag-and-vector-store-with-spring-ai: The third tutorial shows Spring AI support for RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and vector store.
4. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/03/04/spring-ai-with-multimodality-and-images: The fourth tutorial shows Spring AI support for a multimodality feature and image generation
5. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/03/10/using-ollama-with-spring-ai: The fifth tutorial shows Spring AI support for interactions with AI models run with Ollama
6. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/03/13/tool-calling-with-spring-ai: The sixth tutorial show Spring AI for the Tool Calling feature.

Source Code

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions.

Motivation for MCP with Spring AI

MCP introduces an interesting concept for applications interacting with AI models. With MCP the application can provide specific tools/functions for several other services, which need to use data exposed by that application. Additionally, it can expose prompt templates and resources. Thanks to that, we don’t need to implement AI tools/functions inside every client service but integrate them with the application that exposes tools over MCP.

The best way to analyze the MCP concept is through an example. Let’s consider an application that connects to a database and exposes data through REST endpoints. If we want to use that data in our AI application we should implement and register AI tools that retrieve data by connecting such the REST endpoints. So, each client-side application that needs data from the source service would have to implement its own set of AI tools locally. Here comes the MCP concept. The source service defines and exposes AI tools/functions in the standardized form. All other apps that need to provide data to AI models can load and use a predefined set of tools.

The following diagram illustrates our scenario. Two Spring Boot applications act as MCP servers. They connect to the database and use Spring AI MCP Server support to expose @Tool methods to the MCP client-side app. The client-side app communicates with the OpenAI model. It includes the tools exposed by the server-side apps in the user query to the AI model. The person-mcp-service app provides @Tool methods for searching persons in the database table. The account-mcp-service is doing the same for the persons’ accounts.

Build MCP Server App with Spring AI

Let’s begin with the implementation of applications that act as MCP servers. They both run and use an in-memory H2 database. To interact with a database we include the Spring Data JPA module. Spring AI allows us to switch between three transport types: STDIO, Spring MVC, and Spring WebFlux. MCP Server with Spring WebFlux supports Server-Sent Events (SSE) and an optional STDIO transport. Here’s a list of required Maven dependencies:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-mcp-server-webflux-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
    <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Create the Person MCP Server

Here’s an @Entity class for interacting with the person table:

@Entity
public class Person {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    private int age;
    private String nationality;
    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    private Gender gender;
    
    // ... getters and setters
    
}

The Spring Data Repository interface contains a single method for searching persons by their nationality:

public interface PersonRepository extends CrudRepository<Person, Long> {
    List<Person> findByNationality(String nationality);
}

The PersonTools @Service bean contains two Spring AI @Tool methods. It injects the PersonRepository bean to interact with the H2 database. The getPersonById method returns a single person with a specific ID field, while the getPersonsByNationality returns a list of all persons with a given nationality.

@Service
public class PersonTools {

    private PersonRepository personRepository;

    public PersonTools(PersonRepository personRepository) {
        this.personRepository = personRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find person by ID")
    public Person getPersonById(
            @ToolParam(description = "Person ID") Long id) {
        return personRepository.findById(id).orElse(null);
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all persons by nationality")
    public List<Person> getPersonsByNationality(
            @ToolParam(description = "Nationality") String nationality) {
        return personRepository.findByNationality(nationality);
    }
    
}

Once we define @Tool methods, we must register them within the Spring AI MCP server. We can use the ToolCallbackProvider bean for that. More specifically, the MethodToolCallbackProvider class provides a builder that creates an instance of the ToolCallbackProvider class with a list of references to objects with @Tool methods.

@SpringBootApplication
public class PersonMCPServer {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(PersonMCPServer.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    public ToolCallbackProvider tools(PersonTools personTools) {
        return MethodToolCallbackProvider.builder()
                .toolObjects(personTools)
                .build();
    }

}

Finally, we must provide configuration properties. The person-mcp-server app will listen on the 8060 port. We should also set the name and version of the MCP server embedded in our application.

spring:
  ai:
    mcp:
      server:
        name: person-mcp-server
        version: 1.0.0
  jpa:
    database-platform: H2
    generate-ddl: true
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: create-drop

logging.level.org.springframework.ai: DEBUG

server.port: 8060

That’s all. We can start the application.

$ cd spring-ai-mcp/person-mcp-service
$ mvn spring-boot:run

Create the Account MCP Server

Then, we will do very similar things in the second application that acts as an MCP server. Here’s the @Entity class for interacting with the account table:

@Entity
public class Account {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String number;
    private int balance;
    private Long personId;
    
    // ... getters and setters
    
}

The Spring Data Repository interface contains a single method for searching accounts belonging to a given person:

public interface AccountRepository extends CrudRepository<Account, Long> {
    List<Account> findByPersonId(Long personId);
}

The AccountTools @Service bean contains a single Spring AI @Tool method. It injects the AccountRepository bean to interact with the H2 database. The getAccountsByPersonId method returns a list of accounts owned by the person with a specified ID field value.

@Service
public class AccountTools {

    private AccountRepository accountRepository;

    public AccountTools(AccountRepository accountRepository) {
        this.accountRepository = accountRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Find all accounts by person ID")
    public List<Account> getAccountsByPersonId(
            @ToolParam(description = "Person ID") Long personId) {
        return accountRepository.findByPersonId(personId);
    }
}

Of course, the account-mcp-server application will use ToolCallbackProvider to register @Tool methods defined inside the AccountTools class.

@SpringBootApplication
public class AccountMCPService {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(AccountMCPService.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    public ToolCallbackProvider tools(AccountTools accountTools) {
        return MethodToolCallbackProvider.builder()
                .toolObjects(accountTools)
                .build();
    }
    
}

Here are the application configuration properties. The account-mcp-server app will listen on the 8040 port.

spring:
  ai:
    mcp:
      server:
        name: account-mcp-server
        version: 1.0.0
  jpa:
    database-platform: H2
    generate-ddl: true
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: create-drop

logging.level.org.springframework.ai: DEBUG

server.port: 8040

Let’s run the second server-side app:

$ cd spring-ai-mcp/account-mcp-service
$ mvn spring-boot:run

Once we start the application, we should see the log indicating how many tools were registered in the MCP server.

Build MCP Client App with Spring AI

Implementation

We will create a single client-side application. However, we can imagine an architecture where many applications consume tools exposed by one MCP server. Our application interacts with the OpenAI chat model, so we must include the Spring AI OpenAI starter. For the MCP Client starter, we can choose between two dependencies: Standard MCP client and Spring WebFlux client. Spring team recommends using the WebFlux-based SSE connection with the spring-ai-mcp-client-webflux-spring-boot-starter. Finally, we include the Spring Web starter to expose the REST endpoint. However, you can use Spring WebFlux starter to expose them reactively.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-mcp-client-webflux-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-ai-openai-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Our MCP client connects with two MCP servers. We must provide the following connection settings in the application.yml file.

spring.ai.mcp.client.sse.connections:
  person-mcp-server:
    url: http://localhost:8060
  account-mcp-server:
    url: http://localhost:8040

Our sample Spring Boot application contains to @RestControllers, which expose HTTP endpoints. The PersonController class defines two endpoints for searching and counting persons by nationality. The MCP Client Boot Starter automatically configures tool callbacks that integrate with Spring AI’s tool execution framework. Thanks to that we can use the ToolCallbackProvider instance to provide default tools to the ChatClient bean. Then, we can perform the standard steps to interact with the AI model with Spring AI ChatClient. However, the client will use tools exposed by both sample MCP servers.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/persons")
public class PersonController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(PersonController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public PersonController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultTools(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/nationality/{nationality}")
    String findByNationality(@PathVariable String nationality) {

        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                Find persons with {nationality} nationality.
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create(Map.of("nationality", nationality));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count-by-nationality/{nationality}")
    String countByNationality(@PathVariable String nationality) {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many persons come from {nationality} ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create(Map.of("nationality", nationality));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }
}

Let’s switch to the second @RestController. The AccountController class defines two endpoints for searching accounts by person ID. The GET /accounts/count-by-person-id/{personId} returns the number of accounts belonging to a given person. The GET /accounts/balance-by-person-id/{personId} is slightly more complex. It counts the total balance in all person’s accounts. However, it must also return the person’s name and nationality, which means that it must call the getPersonById tool method exposed by the person-mcp-server app after calling the tool for searching accounts by person ID.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/accounts")
public class AccountController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(PersonController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;

    public AccountController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultTools(tools)
                .build();
    }

    @GetMapping("/count-by-person-id/{personId}")
    String countByPersonId(@PathVariable String personId) {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create(Map.of("personId", personId));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

    @GetMapping("/balance-by-person-id/{personId}")
    String balanceByPersonId(@PathVariable String personId) {
        PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate("""
                How many accounts has person with {personId} ID ?
                Return person name, nationality and a total balance on his/her accounts.
                """);
        Prompt p = pt.create(Map.of("personId", personId));
        return this.chatClient.prompt(p)
                .call()
                .content();
    }

}

Running the Application

Before starting the client-side app we must export the OpenAI token as the SPRING_AI_OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable.

export SPRING_AI_OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY>

Then go to the sample-client directory and run the app with the following command:

$ cd spring-ai-mcp/sample-client
$ mvn spring-boot:run

Once we start the application, we can switch to the logs. As you see, the sample-client app receives responses with tools from both person-mcp-server and account-mcp-server apps.

Testing MCP with Spring Boot

Both server-side applications load data from the import.sql scripts on startup. Spring Data JPA automatically imports data from such scripts. Our MCP client application listens on the 8080 port. Let’s call the first endpoint to get a list of persons from Germany:

curl http://localhost:8080/persons/nationality/Germany

Here’s the response from the OpenAI model:

We can also call the endpoint that counts the number with a given nationality.

curl http://localhost:8080/persons/count-by-nationality/Germany

As the final test, we can call the GET /accounts/balance-by-person-id/{personId} endpoint that interacts with tools exposed by both MCP server-side apps. It requires an AI model to combine data from person and account sources.

Exposing Prompts with MCP

We can also expose prompts and resources with the Spring AI MCP server support. To register and expose prompts we need to define the list of SyncPromptRegistration objects. It contains the name of the prompt, a list of input arguments, and a text content.

@SpringBootApplication
public class PersonMCPServer {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(PersonMCPServer.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    public ToolCallbackProvider tools(PersonTools personTools) {
        return MethodToolCallbackProvider.builder()
                .toolObjects(personTools)
                .build();
    }

    @Bean
    public List<McpServerFeatures.SyncPromptRegistration> prompts() {
        var prompt = new McpSchema.Prompt("persons-by-nationality", "Get persons by nationality",
                List.of(new McpSchema.PromptArgument("nationality", "Person nationality", true)));

        var promptRegistration = new McpServerFeatures.SyncPromptRegistration(prompt, getPromptRequest -> {
            String argument = (String) getPromptRequest.arguments().get("nationality");
            var userMessage = new McpSchema.PromptMessage(McpSchema.Role.USER,
                    new McpSchema.TextContent("How many persons come from " + argument + " ?"));
            return new McpSchema.GetPromptResult("Count persons by nationality", List.of(userMessage));
        });

        return List.of(promptRegistration);
    }
}

After startup, the application prints information about a list of registered prompts in the logs.

There is no built-in Spring AI support for loading prompts using the MCP client. However, Spring AI MCP support is under active development so we may expect some new features soon. For now, Spring AI provides the auto-configured instance of McpSyncClient. We can use it to search the prompt in the list of prompts received from the server. Then, we can prepare the PromptTemplate instance using the registered content and create the Prompt by filling the template with the input parameters.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/persons")
public class PersonController {

    private final static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory
        .getLogger(PersonController.class);
    private final ChatClient chatClient;
    private final List<McpSyncClient> mcpSyncClients;

    public PersonController(ChatClient.Builder chatClientBuilder,
                            ToolCallbackProvider tools,
                            List<McpSyncClient> mcpSyncClients) {
        this.chatClient = chatClientBuilder
                .defaultTools(tools)
                .build();
        this.mcpSyncClients = mcpSyncClients;
    }

    // ... other endpoints
    
    @GetMapping("/count-by-nationality-from-client/{nationality}")
    String countByNationalityFromClient(@PathVariable String nationality) {
        return this.chatClient
                .prompt(loadPromptByName("persons-by-nationality", nationality))
                .call()
                .content();
    }

    Prompt loadPromptByName(String name, String nationality) {
        McpSchema.GetPromptRequest r = new McpSchema
            .GetPromptRequest(name, Map.of("nationality", nationality));
        var client = mcpSyncClients.stream()
                .filter(c -> c.getServerInfo().name().equals("person-mcp-server"))
                .findFirst();
        if (client.isPresent()) {
            var content = (McpSchema.TextContent) client.get() 
                .getPrompt(r)
                .messages()
                .getFirst()
                .content();
            PromptTemplate pt = new PromptTemplate(content.text());
            Prompt p = pt.create(Map.of("nationality", nationality));
            LOG.info("Prompt: {}", p);
            return p;
        } else return null;
    }
}

Final Thoughts

Model Context Protocol is an important initiative in the AI world. It allows us to avoid reinventing the wheel for each new data source. A unified protocol streamlines integration, minimizing development time and complexity. As businesses expand their AI toolsets, MCP enables seamless connectivity across multiple systems without the burden of excessive custom code. Spring AI introduced the initial version of MCP support recently. It seems promising. With Spring AI Client and Server starters, we may implement a distributed architecture, where several different apps use the AI tools exposed by a single service.

The post Using Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Spring AI appeared first on Piotr's TechBlog.

This is the sixth part of my series of articles about Spring Boot and AI. It is worth reading the following posts before proceeding with the current one. Please pay special attention to the second article. I will refer to it often in this article.

1. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/01/28/getting-started-with-spring-ai-and-chat-model: The first tutorial introduces the Spring AI project and its support for building applications based on chat models like OpenAI or Mistral AI.
2. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/01/30/getting-started-with-spring-ai-function-calling: The second tutorial shows Spring AI support for Java function calling with the OpenAI chat model.
3. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/02/24/using-rag-and-vector-store-with-spring-ai: The third tutorial shows Spring AI support for RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and vector store.
4. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/03/04/spring-ai-with-multimodality-and-images: The fourth tutorial shows Spring AI support for a multimodality feature and image generation
5. https://piotrminkowski.com/2025/03/10/using-ollama-with-spring-ai: The fifth tutorial shows Spring AI supports for interactions with AI models run with Ollama

Source Code

Feel free to use my source code if you’d like to try it out yourself. To do that, you must clone my sample GitHub repository. Then you should only follow my instructions.

Motivation for Tool Calling in Spring AI

The tool calling feature helps us solve a common AI model challenge related to internal or live data sources. If we want to augment a model with such data our applications must allow it to interact with a set of APIs or tools. In our case, the internal database (H2) contains information about the structure of our stock wallet. The sample Spring Boot application asks an AI model about the total value of the wallet based on daily stock prices or the highest value for the last few days. The model must retrieve the structure of our stock wallet and the latest stock prices. We will do the same exercise as for a function calling feature. It will be enhanced with additional scenarios I’ll describe later.

Use the Calling Tools Feature in Spring AI

Create WalletTools

Let’s begin with the WalletTools implementation, which is responsible for interaction with a database. We can compare it to the previous implementation based on Spring functions available in the pl.piomin.services.functions.stock.WalletService class. It defines a single method annotated with @Tool. The important element is the right description that must inform the model what that method does. The method returns the number of shares for each company in our portfolio retrieved from the database through the Spring Data @Repository.

public class WalletTools {

    private WalletRepository walletRepository;

    public WalletTools(WalletRepository walletRepository) {
        this.walletRepository = walletRepository;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Number of shares for each company in my wallet")
    public List<Share> getNumberOfShares() {
        return (List<Share>) walletRepository.findAll();
    }
}

We can register the WalletTools class as a Spring @Bean in the application main class.

@Bean
public WalletTools walletTools(WalletRepository walletRepository) {
   return new WalletTools(walletRepository);
}

The Spring Boot application launches an embedded, in-memory database and inserts test data into the stock table. Our wallet contains the most popular companies on the U.S. stock market, including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.

insert into share(id, company, quantity) values (1, 'AAPL', 100);
insert into share(id, company, quantity) values (2, 'AMZN', 300);
insert into share(id, company, quantity) values (3, 'META', 300);
insert into share(id, company, quantity) values (4, 'MSFT', 400);
insert into share(id, company, quantity) values (5, 'NVDA', 200);

Create StockTools

The StockTools class is responsible for interaction with TwelveData stock API. It defines two methods. The getLatestStockPrices method returns only the latest close price for a specified company. It is a tool calling version of the method provided within the pl.piomin.services.functions.stock.StockService function. The second method is more complicated. It must return a historical daily close prices for a defined number of days. Each price must be correlated with a quotation date.

public class StockTools {

    private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(StockTools.class);

    private RestTemplate restTemplate;
    @Value("${STOCK_API_KEY:none}")
    String apiKey;

    public StockTools(RestTemplate restTemplate) {
        this.restTemplate = restTemplate;
    }

    @Tool(description = "Latest stock prices")
    public StockResponse getLatestStockPrices(@ToolParam(description = "Name of company") String company) {
        StockData data = restTemplate.getForObject("https://api.twelvedata.com/time_series?symbol={0}&interval=1min&outputsize=1&apikey={1}",
                StockData.class,
                company,
                apiKey);
        DailyStockData latestData = data.getValues().get(0);
        LOG.info("Get stock prices: {} -> {}", company, latestData.getClose());
        return new StockResponse(Float.parseFloat(latestData.getClose()));
    }

    @Tool(description = "Historical daily stock prices")
    public List<DailyShareQuote> getHistoricalStockPrices(@ToolParam(description = "Search period in days") int days,
                                                          @ToolParam(description = "Name of company") String company) {
        StockData data = restTemplate.getForObject("https://api.twelvedata.com/time_series?symbol={0}&interval=1day&outputsize={1}&apikey={2}",
                StockData.class,
                company,
                days,
                apiKey);
        return data.getValues().stream()
                .map(d -> new DailyShareQuote(company, Float.parseFloat(d.getClose()), d.getDatetime()))
                .toList();
    }
}