What Is MCP

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard developed by Anthropic that enables large language models (LLMs) to receive data from any backend or application in a single, standardized format. Prior to the introduction of MCP, developers working on agent-based AI systems had to rely on custom tools and logic to connect with the APIs of various third-party applications. This process was often tedious and didn’t scale effectively, as every integration had to be manually built and maintained by the developers.

With MCP, this responsibility has shifted: application developers can now expose their APIs in a unified format that most models and agent frameworks can easily understand right from the outset.