This Week in Neo4j: MCP, GraphRAG, Knowledge Graph, Temporal Graph and more

Senior Developer Marketing Manager

August 2, 2025

3 min read

Welcome to This Week in Neo4j, your fix for news from the world of graph databases!

We are very excited about our latest book, Essential GraphRAG, which was just published and is available for free to download. Additionally, this edition explores how MCP is powering modular, context-aware AI systems, reveals how Neo4j enhances RAG pipelines with reasoning and accuracy and dives deep into temporal graph modelling for real-time fraud detection.

If you are interested in more graph tech news, our friends at G.V() have launched a weekly newsletter (see below). They will also join us on the stream next week for a look at their Graph-Native IDE.

Join our Neo4j User Research panel! Sign up to share your experiences with a researcher and influence the future of Neo4j products.
What’s in it for you? A chance to connect directly with product development teams, get paid compensation, hear about what we are working on, and more!

Happy Graphing,

Alexander Erdl

COMING UP!

Livestream: Going Meta: S02E11 on August 05, Neo4j Live: G.V() – A Graph-Native IDE for Neo4j on August 12 & MCP Powered Agents For Your Graph on August 13
Conferences: Find us at KCDC, Kansas City on August 13-15 & Snowflake World Tour, Sydney on August 14
Meetup: Meet us in Melbourne, AU on August 12
All Neo4j Events: Webinars and More
GraphSummit Series: Transform Your Enterprise with Graph and GenAI – Next Stop: Chicago on August 21

FEATURED COMMUNITY MEMBER: Joakim Nilsson

Joakim is Knowledge Graph Lead and has experience running Knowledge Graph projects in both the public and private sectors.

Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Joakim is a Featured NODES 2025 Speaker. His session is titled “The Green potential of Knowledge Graphs”. He will show how graph databases are uniquely qualified to map and analyse intricate connections of an organisation’s supply chain in real time to drive real sustainability outcomes.

MCP: Everything a Developer Needs to Know About MCP with Neo4j

This article by Michael Hunger and Chris Heilmann highlights how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) simplifies integration of LLMs, tools, databases and memory into modular, context‑aware AI systems. The post discusses MCP adoption across major frameworks, outlines its architecture of clients and servers and addresses challenges such as security, discovery and scalability as MCP enters early production use.

GraphRAG: Essential GraphRAG

Tomaž Bratanič and Oskar Hane just finished their book “Essential GraphRAG”. It offers a hands-on guide to building production-ready GraphRAG systems. You’ll learn to convert unstructured text into structured knowledge graphs, use vector and graph-based retrieval, generate Cypher queries from natural language, construct agentic RAG applications and evaluate pipeline performance and traceability. Get Your Free Copy with the link above!

Knowledge Graph: Your RAG Pipeline is Lying with Confidence – Here’s How I Gave It a Brain with Neo4j

Nomthandazo Tshuma exposes a hidden flaw in RAG pipelines: semantic drift. From blunt chunking to vector confusion and hallucinated citations, standard pipelines miss meaning. The fix? Smarter chunking and a knowledge graph powered by Neo4j transform RAG into an accurate, explainable and trustworthy reasoning engine by weaving concepts and context into your retrieval.

Temporal Graph: Mastering Fraud Detection With Temporal Graph Modeling

In this technical deep dive, Pierre Halftermeyer presents a temporal graph model tailored for fraud detection within credit and consumer data domains. He introduces a time‑aware Connected Component Forest, where events are linked chronologically to preserve real-time causality and avoid information leakage in ML pipelines. Batching WCC computations, projecting linear event paths and ensuring graph sparsity lead to real-time features for Machine Learning and scalable fraud detection.

CONTINUOUS LEARNING

GraphAcademy: Create GraphQL APIs backed by Neo4j in “Introduction to Neo4j & GraphQL“
Get to Know Graph: Level up your graph skills with webinars packed with practical insights to help you build powerful apps
Learn on Your Schedule: Go deeper into graph technology on Neo4j’s On-Demand webinar library
Workshops: Next Neo4j Fundamentals Virtual Workshop:AMER, August 19, APAC, August 20 & EMEA, August 20

POST OF THE WEEK: Bryce W. Merkl Sasaki

Catch this edition of the Weekly Edge, wherein:
– I quote Mugatu: "That GraphRAG is so hot right now" ?
– I compare @pacoid.bsky.social to the Gandalf of Graphs ??‍♂️
– I share a free book by former #Neo4j colleagues ?
– A bit of helpful stuff too

gdotv.com/blog/weekly-…
#GraphRAG #graphdatabases

[image or embed]

— Bryce W. Merkl Sasaki (@bwmerkl.bsky.social) 25. Juli 2025 um 20:23

Please share it if you like it!