[RELEASE] first release of units 0,1,2

[burtenshaw]

This is the content for the first release of the mcp course.

Proposed Course Structure

• (here) Unit 0 - practical
• (here) Unit 1 - Fundamentals
• (here) Unit 2 - Gradio use case
• Unit 3 - Custom use case | Deep technical dive
• Unit 4 - Bonus units by Partners

Units 3 and 4 will be based on community engagement. IMO, if the community is really excited, we could expand unit 3 and go deeper into MCP. Likewise, we could encourage partners to make more content in bonus units.

Reviewing

This is a rough and early draft but I want to get it out quick.

• Feel free to recommend adding/removing pages or sections.
• Could add short videos easily
• Could add more diagrams
• Could make more demos

PREVIEW

[Vaibhavs10]

few suggestions on increasing the readability and some videos to put the point through

[HuggingFaceDocBuilderDev]

The docs for this PR live here. All of your documentation changes will be reflected on that endpoint. The docs are available until 30 days after the last update.

[burtenshaw]

@yvrjsharma I noticed that you implemented Gradio as an MCP client here and wondered if you wanted to review and/or re-use the implementation from this PR in units/en/unit2/gradio-client.mdx.

[yvrjsharma]

@yvrjsharma I noticed that you implemented Gradio as an MCP client here and wondered if you wanted to review and/or re-use the implementation from this PR in units/en/unit2/gradio-client.mdx.

Thanks for the pointers, @burtenshaw! While I don't have strong feelings on this, I believe my implementation is more general, whereas the one in the PR at units/en/unit2/gradio-client.mdx focuses specifically on smolagents. I would prefer to maintain the generic option and can reference this implementation in my course for those who are interested. However, as I mentioned, my opinions on this aren't very strong, so I will defer to @abidlabs for his perspective.

[abidlabs]

Personally, I prefer the neatness of the smolagents MCP Client, as implementing it entirely in Python with Gradio is quite complicated and I feel like is not the main message. Since readers of the course will already be familiar with smolagents, good to reuse this imo!

[burtenshaw]

Thanks for taking a look @abidlabs and @yvrjsharma! Personally, I don't think the raw python example is bad in an MCP context but it's definitely educations, it's just a stretch for the agents course. I would suggest this:

Agents-course: Gradio unit : re-use the smolagents example from this PR
MCP course : include both the smolagents and raw python example.

[yvrjsharma]

Thanks @abidlabs, @burtenshaw, this approach sounds good to me too!

Agents-course: Gradio unit : re-use the smolagents example from this PR
MCP course : include both the smolagents and raw python example.