What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
An open protocol standardizing how AI applications connect to external tools, data sources, and prompts through pluggable servers.
Definition
The Model Context Protocol, open-sourced by Anthropic in late 2024, defines a JSON-RPC-based client-server interface through which AI applications discover and invoke capabilities: tools (callable functions), resources (readable data), and prompts (reusable templates). An MCP server wraps a system—GitHub, Postgres, a filesystem, Slack—once, and any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, IDE assistants, agent frameworks) can use it, replacing per-app bespoke integrations; the pattern is often described as USB-C for AI tooling. Servers run locally over stdio or remotely over HTTP with streaming. SDKs exist for TypeScript, Python, and other languages, and OpenAI and Google have adopted the protocol.