In artificial intelligence, MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is an open standard introduced by Anthropic in November 2024 to let AI assistants securely connect to external data sources, files, databases, and tools through a single, uniform interface.
What is MCP?
MCP is like a USB-C adapter, what I mean is it’s a standardised way to make systems talk to each other, much like usb-c has become the standard way to charge devices.
How do I use MCP?
MCP vs API
It’s tempting to think MCP replaces APIs, but the relationship is more collaborative than competitive. A traditional API (Application Programming Interface) defines how two pieces of software talk to each other. The catch is that every API is different each one has its own authentication, endpoints, and quirks, so developers must write custom code to connect an AI model to each service individually.
MCP takes a different approach. Rather than replacing APIs, it standardizes how AI models discover and use them. Think of MCP as a universal adapter often compared to USB-C for AI applications. Instead of building a bespoke integration for every tool, developers expose their service once through an MCP server, and any MCP-compatible AI can understand and use it.
This solves what’s known as the “M×N problem.” Connecting several AI models to many tools traditionally required a separate integration for each combination. MCP reduces that to a simple M+N: build one server per tool, and one client per model.
In practice, MCP servers frequently call regular APIs behind the scenes. So APIs remain the plumbing MCP is the standardised layer that lets AI models tap into them consistently.
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