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What MCP is
A standardised way to connect a model to external systems. Tool discovery for LLMs.
MCP is a standardised way to connect a model to external data sources and tools. Open-sourced by Anthropic, and now the closest thing the ecosystem has to a common port.
Before MCPa hand-written adapter per system, inside your app
With MCPone protocol, every system behind a server
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Before, every integration was a bespoke adapter living inside the app. After, the app speaks one protocol and every integration is a server behind it — swappable, reusable, written once by whoever owns the system.
The one-liner worth remembering: MCP is tool discovery for LLMs. It is not a new way to call a function; it is a standard way to find out what functions exist and what they need.