What Is MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Why It Needs a Gateway in Production — A Practical Guide for AI Engineers

It always starts with “just one integration”. You want your AI agent to send a message to Slack. So you wire it up. A bit of custom code, some API calls, done. Then someone asks for GitHub access. Then Jira. Then your internal database. Then Notion. Before you realize it, you’re not building an AI system anymore; you’re maintaining a web of fragile integrations. Every new tool means new code. Every update breaks something. Every credential becomes a security risk. If you have 10 agents and 20 to