Glossary · Integration
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data sources, letting any compatible AI assistant use any compatible tool without custom integration code.
Before MCP, connecting an AI assistant to a tool meant writing a one-off integration for each pairing–every assistant times every tool. MCP, introduced by Anthropic in 2024 and since adopted broadly, standardizes the interface: a tool exposes its capabilities through an MCP server, and any MCP-compatible client (Claude, IDEs, agent frameworks) can discover and use them. Think of it as USB for AI tools. For data work this matters because databases are the most valuable thing to connect an AI to–and a standard protocol means your database tooling works across AI assistants instead of being locked to one.
In practice
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