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What Is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI systems, such as language models, to external tools and data sources in a consistent, interoperable way.

Origin and purpose

MCP was open-sourced by Anthropic in November 2024 as a standard way to connect AI assistants to the systems where data actually lives, replacing custom, one-off integrations with a single common protocol.

Why it matters for data providers

As AI agents increasingly need live external data, exposing a dataset or API through an MCP-compatible interface makes that data directly usable by AI assistants and agent workflows without custom integration work.