Anthropic introduces the Model Context Protocol

Anthropic introduced MCP as an open standard for connecting assistants to repositories, business tools, and development environments. The idea was simple: stop rebuilding a custom integration for every model and every data source.

My read at the time was that the protocol mattered more than its origin. Once other providers began adopting it, MCP started to look like shared plumbing for agents rather than an Anthropic-only feature.