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Model Context Protocol: The Standard That Lets AI Agents Actually Do Things
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard designed to connect AI assistants to external services. The core problem MCP solves is the "N×M integration challenge," where multiple AI models need to connect to numerous external systems, requiring many custom integrations. Anthropic introduced MCP in November 2024 to address this issue by allowing developers to build one MCP server per service, enabling compatibility with various AI models. The architecture uses a client-server structure via JSON-RPC 2.0, with MCP hosts, clients, and servers. MCP servers expose tools, resources, and prompts, tools being functions the model can call to act. MCP shifts developers from writing orchestration logic to writing intent, allowing AI models to manage the interactions. MCP has accelerated agentic AI by simplifying connections, but security is crucial, urging only connecting trusted servers. Authentication, minimal permissions, and OAuth are important for secure MCP usage. MCP is effective where the orchestration is by the AI model, like agentic workflows. MCP is not a substitute for APIs or SDKs; these are best for deterministic code paths. MCP and traditional integrations are often a combination in serious applications. The MCP specification and resources are available on modelcontextprotocol.io.
