The Model Context Protocol is an open specification, introduced by Anthropic in late 2024, for standardizing how AI agents connect to external tools, data sources, and services. MCP defines three roles — clients (agents), servers (tools), and the transport carrying messages between them — and primitives for capability discovery, tool invocation, authentication, and resource access.
By March 2026 MCP had crossed 97 million cumulative installs and become the de facto standard for enterprise agent integration. Every major model provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft) supports MCP natively. Every major enterprise SaaS vendor ships an MCP server. The standardization has been a critical enabler of the autonomous coworker transition — without a common protocol, each integration required bespoke engineering work that made enterprise agent deployment economically prohibitive.
For the detailed analysis of MCP's adoption curve and strategic implications, see the CrashBytes coverage of MCP at 97 million installs.