MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open-source standard that gives AI applications a shared way to connect to external data, tools, and workflows. An AI application acts as the host; an MCP client inside it communicates with servers that offer capabilities. MCP standardizes that connection, but it does not provide every service or guarantee safe, correct actions.
Why MCP exists
An AI application may need information from another system or need to perform an action there. Without a shared interface, developers can build a separate, bespoke integration for each application and service. MCP defines a common protocol for those connections, with the aim of making different AI applications and external systems interoperable. The official introduction compares it to USB-C: the analogy is about a standardized interface, not a physical connector. Model Context Protocol: What is MCP?
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How MCP works
MCP uses a client-server architecture. The host is the AI application; an MCP client within the host communicates with an MCP server, which exposes capabilities to the application. The protocol’s data layer uses JSON-RPC-based messages, while its transport layer carries those messages between client and server. MCP architecture overview
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- Client: The component within the host that communicates with a server.
- Server: The component that makes capabilities available to the AI application.
What are MCP tools, resources, and prompts?
Servers can provide three kinds of capability. A database server, for example, might make a query tool available, offer its schema as a resource, and provide a reusable prompt with example queries.
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| Capability | What it provides | Database example |
|---|---|---|
| Tool | An action a model can request; servers describe tools and their input schemas, and clients can list and call them. | Run a database query. |
| Resource | Contextual data made available to the AI application. | Provide the database schema. |
| Prompt | A reusable interaction template, potentially with examples. | Offer a template for asking questions about the database. |
Tools are different from resources and prompts because invoking a tool can do something in an external system. The official tools specification says there “SHOULD always be a human in the loop with the ability to deny tool invocations.” It also recommends making tool activity visible. MCP does not impose one universal user-interface pattern, so the controls available depend on the client. MCP tools specification
What MCP does not guarantee
- It does not itself supply the connected service, data, or tool; servers expose those capabilities.
- It does not make every integration safe just because it uses the protocol. Tool calls may have real effects, so users should be able to see and deny them.
- It does not ensure that a model’s requested action or answer is correct.
Which MCP version do current implementation guides describe?
The latest release covered here is the MCP specification dated July 28, 2026. Its announcement highlights a stateless protocol core, multi-round-trip requests, header-based routing, cacheable list results, authorization hardening, a formal extensions framework, and updated Tier 1 SDKs. It retires the initialize/initialized exchange and the Mcp-Session-Id header in this version. The legacy HTTP+SSE transport is deprecated with a year-long offramp; Roots, Sampling, and Logging are deprecated but continue working for at least twelve months, according to the announcement. The 2026-07-28 Specification
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