Differences

[hemachowdary-10]

Explain differences between root and resources.
why API token are used . how they are used

[crivetimihai]

Hi,

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/client/roots "Roots define the boundaries of where servers can operate within the filesystem, allowing them to understand which directories and files they have access to. "

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/server/resources ". Resources allow servers to share data that provides context to language models, such as files, database schemas, or application-specific information. Each resource is uniquely identified by a URI."

[hemachowdary-10]

I am still confusing that roots and resources act as knowledge base for the mcp server right . can u help me with to create the resources and roots to create in real-time . i would like to check how they gone work. i would like to check on the A2A features as well.

In resources from the admin ui how we are going to add web page url . if i am trying to add it says invalid uri

given web url : https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/server/resources#data-types

[crivetimihai]

Hi @hemachowdary-10, let me clarify:

Roots vs Resources — they are NOT a knowledge base

These are distinct MCP protocol concepts:

• Roots define discovery boundaries — they tell MCP clients what filesystem paths or URL prefixes the server can operate on. Think of them as "allowed scopes." Example: file:///home/user/data means the server can access files under that path.

• Resources are specific data items — individual files, documents, or content that a client can read. Each has a URI and content. Example: a resource with URI file:///home/user/data/report.csv represents one specific file.

Neither is a "knowledge base" in the RAG/retrieval sense. They are part of the MCP protocol for structured data access by language models.

"Invalid URI" error when adding a web URL

I found the issue. The URL you tried:

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/server/resources#data-types

The # character (fragment identifier) is not in the allowed character set for resource URIs. The gateway validates URIs against the pattern ^[a-zA-Z0-9_\-.:/?=&%{}]+$, which does not include #. This causes the error "Resource URI contains invalid characters" at validation time.

Workaround: Remove the fragment (everything after #):

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/server/resources

This is a known limitation — the URI validation pattern should arguably include # and + for standard URL fragments and query parameters. I'll open an issue to track adding # to the allowed URI character set.

A2A features

A2A (Agent-to-Agent) is supported in ContextForge. Documentation is here:

• https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/using/agents/a2a/

The a2a-agents/ directory in the repo also contains example A2A agent implementations you can use as starting points.