The Model Context Protocol, introduced by Anthropic in 2024, standardises how applications expose tools, resources and prompts to language models. Instead of bespoke glue for every model–tool pair, a server implements MCP once and any MCP-aware client can use it — often described as a "USB-C port" for AI integrations.
MCP matters as assistants become agentic: a shared protocol makes the ecosystem of connectors composable and portable across vendors.