THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • MCP is an open protocol introduced by Anthropic in November 2024.
  • It defines how an AI application (the client) talks to servers that expose tools, resources and prompts.
  • One integration can be reused by any MCP-compatible assistant.

Every AI assistant eventually needs to reach outside the chat window: read a file, query a database, open a ticket. Before a standard existed, each of those connections had to be built separately for each assistant. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) was designed to remove that duplication.

How it works

MCP uses a client–server model. The AI application acts as the client. Each MCP server exposes capabilities in three forms: tools the model can call, resources it can read, and prompts that package common tasks.

Why developers care

Because the interface is shared, an integration written once as an MCP server can be used by any compatible assistant. That shifts effort from glue code to the integration itself.

What to watch

Connecting a model to real systems widens the attack surface. Servers should follow least-privilege access, and teams should treat content coming back from tools as untrusted input.