MCP — The Model Context Protocol — an open standard that lets any AI assistant plug into any tool or data source without custom integration code.
grounding — Tying a model's answers to checkable sources — retrieved documents, live data, tool results — instead of letting it answer from memory alone.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
Why it matters
Explains how MCPThe Model Context Protocol — an open standard that lets any AI assistant plug into any tool or data source without custom integration code.Full definition →'s client-server protocol works (STDIO vs Streamable HTTP transports) and shows a concrete hosted browser MCP server example, useful groundingTying a model's answers to checkable sources — retrieved documents, live data, tool results — instead of letting it answer from memory alone.Full definition → for engineers building their first AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → tool integrations.
Key quotes
“An MCP server is a program that exposes tools, data, and actions to an AI model through the Model Context Protocol, a single open standard that any MCP-aware client can call.”
“Anthropic introduced MCP in November 2024 as an open standard, and the ecosystem has since grown to thousands of public servers.”
“It is the difference between a model that can only describe a website and one that can actually operate it.”
