MCP Protocol

MCP (Model Context Protocol) – an open standard by Anthropic (late 2024) unifying model interaction with tools and data: a “universal plug” for the ecosystem.

Client-server architecture; three primitives:

tools – model operations;
resources – data for reading;
prompts – templates for the user.

Value proposition – “build once, use everywhere”.

Limitations: call is request-response, event architecture is built on top; 5 MCP servers can consume ~55k context tokens – treated with progressive disclosure.