$ grep -r "protocols" ~/blog/

There’s something beautifully ironic about using a protocol from 1991 to power cutting-edge AI assistants in 2024. When I first started building gopher-mcp, people thought I was either nostalgic or slightly unhinged. But here’s the thing—sometimes the old ways of doing things teach us something profound about simplicity, focus, and what the internet could have been.

I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the Model Context Protocol (MCP) lately—it’s one of those technologies that makes you go “why didn’t we have this sooner?” After building a couple of MCP servers (gopher-mcp and openzim-mcp), I’m excited to share what I’ve discovered about this game-changing approach to AI tooling.

Update (June 2025): I’ve split this comprehensive guide into two focused articles for better readability:

• Gopher MCP Server: Bringing 1991’s Internet to Modern AI - Focuses on the Gopher protocol, its history, and practical applications
• OpenZIM MCP Server: Offline Knowledge for AI Assistants - Covers offline Wikipedia access and ZIM format optimization