Major news for the PHP community: We have begun developing the official PHP MCP SDK!

PHP Official Announcement On September 5, 2025, the PHP Foundation announced exciting news: development of the official PHP MCP (Model Context Protocol) SDK has officially commenced! This initiative marks another significant stride for the PHP community in embracing AI technology and modern development paradigms, paving the way for deep integration between PHP developers and the AI ecosystem. 💡 Fun Fact: David Soria Parra, co-creator of MCP, served as Release Manager for PHP 5.4 and 5.5 and remains a long-standing PHP core contributor. His PHP code continues to run in every Symfony and Laravel project. 💜

What is MCP? The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard proposed by Anthropic in November 2024. It aims to provide a unified interface for interactions between large language models (LLMs) and external data sources, tools, and systems. Through MCP, developers can easily build AI-driven applications, enabling AI agents to securely and efficiently access and process data, thereby breaking down traditional information silos. MCP supports multiple transport protocols (such as STDIO and HTTP) and simplifies development workflows through features like property annotations. As a cornerstone language in web development, PHP's community remains committed to keeping the language modern and competitive. The development of the official PHP MCP SDK enables PHP developers to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into their applications—whether building intelligent web services or adding AI-powered tools to existing systems.

Significance and Outlook The PHP Foundation blog announced that the official MCP SDK will be developed based on the MCP specification version 2025-03-26, collaborating closely with existing community projects such as php-mcp/server and logiscape/mcp-sdk-php. This SDK aims to provide PHP developers with the following core advantages: 1. Standardized Development Experience: By providing an officially supported SDK, developers can bypass building MCP servers or clients from scratch. Instead, they can leverage an optimized toolset to rapidly implement interactions with AI agents. 2. Deep Integration with the PHP Ecosystem: The SDK will seamlessly integrate with popular PHP frameworks like Laravel and Symfony, offering features such as Artisan commands, configuration management, and session support to reduce the learning curve. 3. Cross-Platform Compatibility: The SDK will support PHP 8.1 and above, ensuring stable operation across environments like Linux and Windows while supporting multiple transport methods including STDIO and HTTP. 4. Open-Source and Community-Driven: As an open-source project supported by the PHP Foundation, the SDK will invite community developers to contribute, collaboratively enhance features, and advance PHP's application in AI.

Current Progress and Future Plans According to the PHP Foundation's announcement, the official PHP MCP SDK is currently in the early development phase and has completed the following tasks: • Infrastructure Setup: Designed a class structure based on the MCP specification, covering core functionalities such as tool discovery and pattern validation. • Preliminary Testing: Completed STDIO transmission testing in PHP 8.1 environments, validating basic client and server functionality. • Community Collaboration: Partnered with developers of existing MCP-related projects (e.g., eduardo/mcp-php-sdk) to integrate outstanding community contributions.

Impact on Developers For PHP developers, the official release of the MCP SDK unlocks new possibilities. Whether building intelligent customer service systems, automated code review tools, or integrating enterprise-grade data sources, the MCP SDK significantly streamlines development workflows. For instance, developers can expose PHP methods as AI-callable tools through simple attribute annotations (e.g., `#[McpTool]`), enabling seamless interaction with LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude. Furthermore, backing from the PHP Foundation ensures the SDK will receive ongoing maintenance and updates, allowing developers to confidently use it for long-term projects. Combined with PHP 8.4's new features (like the Hooks RFC) and the robust ecosystem of the PHP community, the MCP SDK is poised to become a vital tool for AI-driven development.

Conclusion The PHP community is entering an exciting new era. The development of the official PHP MCP SDK not only demonstrates the vitality of the PHP language in modern technology but also opens doors for developers to deeply integrate with AI technologies. As the project progresses, we look forward to witnessing more innovative PHP applications emerge, injecting fresh vitality into the convergence of web development and the AI ecosystem.