AI coding glossary
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Also known as: model context protocol, mcp protocol
In one sentence
Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI clients to external tools, data sources, and capability servers via JSON-RPC.
Full definition
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard created by Anthropic for connecting AI clients (Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot Chat, Google Antigravity 2.0, AWS Kiro via Bedrock AgentCore) to external systems. MCP servers expose three capability types: tools (functions the AI can call), resources (data the AI can read), and prompts (parameterized templates the AI can invoke). The public MCP registry grew from 1,200 servers in early 2025 to 9,400+ in 2026, with 78% of enterprise AI teams running at least one MCP server in production.