Canonical URL: Republished from munonye.com. Full code on GitHub.
🔗 The missing link — You learned @Tool agents in our Spring AI agents tutorial and MCP basics in M9-A. This Spring AI MCP bridge tutorial connects them: your ChatClient calls external MCP tool servers the same way Cursor does.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is how IDE agents discover tools. Spring AI is how you ship AI in production APIs. The Spring AI MCP bridge lets one tool server serve both — no duplicate integrations.
This hands-on guide is part of the AI Developer Tutorials hub. Time: ~45 minutes. Prerequisites: Spring AI first REST endpoint (M7-A), OpenAI API key, Node.js (for the sample MCP server).
Table of contents
- Why bridge MCP and Spring AI?
- Architecture
- Step 1 — Dependencies
- Step 2 — Configure MCP client
- Step 3 — ChatClient + ToolCallbackProvider
- Step 4 — REST endpoint
- Step 5 — Test
- Bonus — Expose Java tools as MCP server
- Production checklist
Why bridge MCP and Spring AI? {#why-bridge}
| Approach | Where tools run | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| @Tool (M13, M14) | Inside Spring Boot JVM | CRUD agents tied to your services |
| MCP server (M9-A) | Separate process / remote host | Shared tools for Cursor + APIs |
| Spring AI MCP bridge | Spring Boot orchestrates MCP clients | Production agents using ecosystem tools |
💡 Real-world pattern: Your team builds an MCP server for internal docs search. Developers use it in Cursor. With this bridge, the same server powers your customer-facing Spring Boot agent — one tool implementation, two consumers.
Related reading: Add AI to Angular CRUD app (M14) for in-process @Tool on an existing app · Function calling from Angular (M8-B) for structured tool UX.
Architecture {#architecture}
┌─────────────────┐ stdio/SSE ┌──────────────────────┐
│ MCP tool server │ ◄──────────────► │ Spring Boot app │
│ (Node, Java, …) │ │ spring-ai-starter- │
└─────────────────┘ │ mcp-client │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ChatClient + OpenA
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**Read the full tutorial with all code on munonye.com →**
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**Full tutorial:** [Spring AI + MCP Bridge Tutorial — Connect External Tool Servers to ChatClient (2026)](https://www.munonye.com/spring-ai-mcp-bridge-tutorial-2026/)
**Kindson Munonye** — [GitHub](https://github.com/KindsonTheGenius) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kindson) · [About](https://www.munonye.com/about/)
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