MCP

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, launched in November 2024 as an open protocol for structured agent access to tools, data and APIs. Since then it has surfaced mostly inside other people's architectures rather than as a subject in its own right.

Katelyn Lesse of Anthropic files it under context management: the standardized way Claude interacts with external systems such as GitHub or Sentry. Google DeepMind built native MCP support into the Interactions API for remote tools. Cloudflare launched Toolshed, gathering more than 400 MCP tools. Dimitri Mazmanov at Spotify defines AiKA Modes by four things: instructions, a model, parameters, and MCP tools. Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor name MCP and OpenAPI as the API standards through which a Personal Agent Protocol session can act, with Shopify among the companies developing that specification. Aaron Levie of Box states the stake directly: CLI and MCP servers become indispensable, because a feature without an API does not exist for an agent.

The friction is recorded alongside the adoption. Pasquale Pillitteri argues against treating an MCP stack as a replacement for established analytics tools; it sits on top of them. The protocol's interactions are semi-typed and lose fidelity compared with domain objects. Excessive token overhead and data leaks both appear in its vicinity.

Converging with Agent Skills in one account and set against Claude Skills in another, MCP is the layer everyone standardizes on while the question of what it costs stays open.