MCP explained: how AI tools connect to real systems

Most AI tools started as isolated chat windows. You pasted in a prompt, copied the answer back out, and hoped the model had enough context. That model does not scale well. Modern AI agents need access to tools, files, APIs and structured context. That is the problem the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, tries to solve. What MCP is MCP is a protocol for connecting AI applications to external tools and data sources. Instead of every AI app inventing its own plugin system, MCP defines a shared way fo