In November 2024, Anthropic quietly released something that would fundamentally transform how AI applications are built: the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
While the AI world was obsessed with model capabilities and benchmarks, MCP addressed a different problem entirely, the messy, expensive reality of connecting AI to the world’s data.
Think of MCP as the USB-C port for AI applications. Just as USB-C created a universal standard that replaced dozens of proprietary connectors, MCP provides a standardized way for AI models to connect to any data source or tool.
This isn’t just another API specification; it’s the infrastructure backbone that makes true context engineering possible at scale.
