Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard, released by Anthropic in November 2024, for connecting AI applications to external tools and data sources. It defines a host-client-server architecture: the AI application acts as the host, embeds an MCP client, and the client communicates over JSON-RPC 2.0 with one or more MCP servers. A server exposes three kinds of primitives: tools, which are functions the model can call; resources, which are data the application can read; and prompts, which are reusable templates. Because every server speaks the same interface, one server integration works with any model or client that supports MCP, instead of a separate connector written per model and per tool. The specification is published under an open-source license with SDKs in several languages, and servers run either locally over standard input and output or remotely over HTTP.
Related terms
Related services: Agentic AI consulting.
Ready to put agentic AI to work?
Book a free 45-minute consultation. We'll map one real process worth automating with production-grade AI.