Building & Product

What is MCP, and why does it matter for my agents?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to outside tools and data, which its own documentation compares to a USB-C port for AI. An MCP server is a small program that exposes one system, such as GitHub, Notion, Gmail or your database, as tools and data; the AI app that uses it (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code) is the client. Anthropic released it in November 2024 and the current specification is dated 28 July 2026. For you it means one connector works in every assistant that speaks MCP: Claude lets even Free users add one custom connector from a URL. Each server widens what the AI can read and do, so connect only servers you trust.

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