MCP
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol initiated by Anthropic that standardizes how AI applications connect to external tools and data sources. Think of it as a USB port for AI: any MCP server can expose databases, ticketing systems, file systems, or internal APIs to MCP-capable AI clients in a uniform way.
How it works
Before MCP, connecting M AI applications to N external systems required M×N bespoke integrations. MCP turns that into M+N: a tool vendor implements an MCP server once, an AI application implements an MCP client once, and they interoperate. The protocol revolves around three capabilities — resources (reading data), tools (performing actions), and prompt templates — communicated over JSON-RPC, with both local process and remote HTTP transports. The key production concern is security governance: an MCP server operates with the AI application's privileges, so you need provenance auditing, least privilege, and confirmation for sensitive actions to avoid data exfiltration through shadow MCP servers — our Cloudflare MCP governance article covers this in depth.
Examples
- 1.An AI coding assistant queries live database schemas so its SQL matches the real tables
- 2.A ticketing system exposed through MCP lets staff create and search tickets in natural language
- 3.Internal APIs become callable from an AI assistant after being wrapped in an MCP server