What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?
Understand Anthropic's Model Context Protocol — the architecture, servers, clients, and why it's becoming the standard for connecting AI to tools.
Imagine you hire a brilliant new developer. They're incredibly talented, but they can't access your GitHub repos, can't read your Jira tickets, can't query your database, and can't check your Slack messages. They're limited to whatever you copy-paste into a chat window.
That was the state of AI agents before MCP. The model could think, but it couldn't reach out and touch the systems where your work actually lives.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data sources. It's the protocol that lets an AI agent read your files, query your database, create GitHub issues, send Slack messages, and interact with any system that has an MCP server.
The Problem MCP Solves
Before MCP, connecting an AI agent to an external
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