Anthropic is proposing a new standard for connecting AI assistants to systems where data resides.
Anthropic is open sourcing a standard called Model Context Protocol (MCP) today that could help AI models generate better and more relevant responses to queries. says.
MCP enables any model, not just Anthropic, to retrieve data from sources such as business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as content repositories and app development environments.
“As AI assistants have gained mainstream adoption, the industry has invested heavily in model capabilities and achieved rapid advances in inference and quality,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. “However, even the most sophisticated models are limited by being trapped behind information silos and legacy systems, isolated from the data, as each new data source requires its own custom implementation. It makes it difficult to scale a truly connected system.”
MCP ostensibly solves this problem through a protocol that allows developers to build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications (such as chatbots). Developers can publish data through MCP servers and build MCP clients (such as apps or workflows) that connect to those servers on command.
Anthropic says companies like Block and Apollo are already integrating MCP into their systems, and development tools companies like Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph are adding MCP support to their platforms.
“Instead of maintaining separate connectors for each data source, developers can now build on standard protocols,” Anthropic wrote. “As the ecosystem matures, AI systems will maintain context as they move between different tools and datasets, replacing today's fragmented integrations with more sustainable architectures.”
Developers can start building with MCP connectors today, and subscribers to Anthropic's Claude Enterprise plan can connect the company's Claude chatbot to their internal systems through MCP servers. Anthropic shares pre-built MCP servers for enterprise systems such as Google Drive, Slack, and GitHub, and will soon offer a toolkit to deploy operational MCP servers that can serve your entire organization. says.
“We are committed to building MCP as a collaborative open source project and ecosystem,” Anthropic wrote. “We invite [developers] Let's build the future of context-aware AI together. ”
MCP sounds like a good idea in theory. But there is no doubt that customers and ecosystem partners want to use their data connectivity approaches and specifications, especially among rivals like OpenAI.
In fact, OpenAI recently introduced data connectivity capabilities to its AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT. This allows ChatGPT to read code in development-centric coding apps, similar to the MCP Drive use case. OpenAI has said it plans to bring this feature, called “Work with Apps,” to other types of apps in the future, but rather than open sourcing the underlying technology, it is working with close partners to We are pursuing the implementation of
It also remains to be seen whether MCP is as beneficial and performant as Anthropic claims. The company says, for example, that MCP allows AI bots to “better capture relevant information to better understand the context of coding tasks,” but the company doesn't provide benchmarks to support this claim. yeah.