Run it locally

There are two ready-made environments. local is for dotnet run: sample data on, logs to the console. docker is for Docker Compose: sample data on, logs to Seq, database on a volume, and the MCP Inspector next door. Both are for your machine. Neither is for production, which is why neither is the default.

Run it

dotnet run

dotnet run --project ./src/Presentation

launchSettings.json sets the environment to local and listens on http://localhost:5032 and https://localhost:7032. The server is at /mcp.

Docker Compose

docker compose up -d --build

Compose builds the run stage, starts Seq and the MCP Inspector next to it, and publishes the server on http://localhost:8080/mcp. Shut it down with docker compose down, or docker compose down -v to drop the database too.

Docker

docker build . --target run --tag acme-movies:local
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 -e DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT=docker acme-movies:local

Without Compose there’s no Seq, so the Serilog sink in appsettings.docker.json has nowhere to send the logs. Swap it for Console if you run the image on its own.

Find your way around

Where	What
/mcp	The server. Streamable HTTP, stateless, JSON-RPC in and server-sent events out
/health/live	Answers 200 while the process is up
/health/ready	Answers 200 when the database can be reached
/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/mcp	Protected resource metadata, only when authentication is on
http://localhost:6274	The MCP Inspector, when running with Docker Compose
http://localhost:5341	Seq, when running with Docker Compose

The health endpoints answer without a token even when authentication is on, so a load balancer never needs to log in.

Use the Inspector

The MCP Inspector is the official test client, and Docker Compose runs it already pointed at http://api:8080/mcp. Open it, press Connect, and:

• Tools lists every tool with its description, annotations and input schema, and gives you a form to call it.
• Resources lets you read server://version or any movies://, authors:// or reviews:// URI.
• Prompts renders each prompt with its arguments, and the title and name arguments autocomplete from the database.

Running with dotnet run instead? Start the Inspector yourself with npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector and point it at http://localhost:5032/mcp.

Try the tools from the terminal

The server is stateless, so a single tools/call works without an initialize first. The sample data uses a fixed seed, so these ids are the same on every machine. See the tool reference for every argument and result.

# One movie, with every review
curl -X POST "http://localhost:5032/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"movies_get","arguments":{"movieId":"e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593"}}}'

# Write a review
curl -X POST "http://localhost:5032/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"reviews_write","arguments":{"authorId":"01fa8b58-05d2-abd4-e55c-2633222dd0a5","movieId":"e159975e-4e6a-1ffd-713e-1eb9d8d4a593","stars":5}}}'

# Read a resource
curl -X POST "http://localhost:5032/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"resources/read","params":{"uri":"server://version"}}'

Run the tests

dotnet test

Each test class builds its own in-memory SQLite database from the migrations and the same fixed seed, and the Presentation tests talk to the server through a real McpClient from the C# SDK, so they exercise the same protocol path as any other client. No test can change what another one sees, and nothing touches movie-reviews.db.

Run just one part of the Dockerfile

The Dockerfile has a stage for each job, so you can build only what you need.

Stage	What it does
build	Restores and builds the solution
test	Runs every test with coverage
coverage	Exports the coverage report to your machine
publish	Publishes the Presentation project
run	The image you deploy

docker build . --target coverage --output type=local,dest=out

Stamp a version

docker build . --target run --tag acme-movies:latest \
  --build-arg VERSION_PREFIX=1.2.3 --build-arg VERSION_SUFFIX=beta

The server://version resource and the serverInfo in the initialize response then report 1.2.3-beta and the commit it was built from.

Stuck?

If curl answers 406 Not Acceptable, you forgot the Accept header. The server insists on application/json, text/event-stream, as the spec says it should. If it says connection refused, check that port 5032 isn’t busy with something else you forgot about.