MCP Overview
definition
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that provides a universal interface for connecting AI models to external tools, data sources, and services. Instead of building custom integrations for every tool and model combination, MCP defines a common protocol — analogous to USB-C for hardware — that any client can use to discover and invoke any server's capabilities.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that provides a universal interface for connecting AI models to external tools, data sources, and services. Instead of building custom integrations for every tool and model combination, MCP defines a common protocol — analogous to USB-C for hardware — that any client can use to discover and invoke any server's capabilities. This standardization is critical because it decouples tool development from model development, enabling an ecosystem where a single MCP server can serve Cursor, Claude Desktop, and any future agent simultaneously without modification. Understanding MCP is foundational to modern agentic architecture because it determines how agents discover what they can do and how they interact with the external world. This concept connects to MCP server primitives for the specific capabilities servers expose, MCP transport for understanding the communication layer, and tool design for understanding how MCP relates to traditional function calling.