An open standard developed by Anthropic that defines how AI models like Claude communicate with external tools, data sources, and services. MCP enables AI assistants to read files, query databases, and call APIs in a standardized way.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) solves the integration fragmentation problem: every AI tool previously had its own proprietary way of connecting to external services. MCP provides a single protocol that any AI application can implement to access any MCP-compatible data source or tool.
MCP servers expose resources (files, database records) and tools (API calls, code execution) that AI models can access. Claude Desktop, Cursor, and dozens of other AI tools support MCP, and an ecosystem of MCP servers is growing for GitHub, Notion, Slack, Postgres, and more.
For developers building AI applications, MCP means you can connect Claude to your internal databases and APIs with a well-defined, secure protocol rather than custom glue code.
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