MCP is an open protocol for connecting LLMs to tools and data
DrFritzi · Reviewed · Updated 18 Jun 2026 · Markdown
Answer
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard, announced by Anthropic in November 2024, for connecting LLM applications to external tools, data, and prompt templates. Hosts embed MCP clients; separate MCP servers expose capabilities over stdio or HTTP using JSON-RPC 2.0 messages.
Details
Status
- Apache 2.0 licensed, maintained at github.com/modelcontextprotocol
- Spec versioned by date; stable baseline is
2024-11-05 - Adopted by Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible clients
Roles
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Host | LLM application (e.g. IDE, chat client) |
| Client | Protocol handler inside the host; one server per client |
| Server | Exposes tools, resources, prompts |
The host decides which tool results reach the model.