What the Model Context Protocol Actually Is (and Why It Became the Standard)

Automated excerpt

MCP gets mentioned in almost every AI engineering conversation right now, but rarely explained plainly. Before late 2024, that bridge had to be built separately for every pair: one integration for Model A talking to a CRM, a different one for Model B talking to the same CRM, and another for Model A talking to a different database. A common protocol turns that into N+M — each model implements MCP once, each tool builds one MCP server once, and every combination just works.

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