What’s the realistic timeline to ship a production MCP server?

Honest numbers from three real builds. Hour 1-4 (this guide): a working dev-only server with five tools, Docker scaffolding, GraphQL data layer, and basic caching. Day 2-3: tool hardening, prompt-injection defences, multi-layer cache wiring (Redis + Varnish), webhook handler, integration tests. Week 2: observability (Prometheus + OpenTelemetry), production deploy pipeline, on-call runbook, scoped credentials per LLM client. Week 3-4: first 5 internal users onboarded, feedback loops, the inevitable “the LLM did what?!” incidents that drive your real safety patterns. Plan a month from zero to a server you’d let a senior dev use unsupervised. The weekend build gets you 60% of the way there; the last 40% is the production polish.