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40 XP

Lesson 5 · 10 min

MCP and the rise of agent protocols

MCP is to agents what HTTP is to web apps. Worth understanding even if you don't use it directly.

What MCP is

Model Context Protocol (MCP, 2024) is a standard that lets agents connect to external tools and data via a uniform interface. Think of it as USB-C for AI agents.

Before MCP: every agent framework had its own tool-definition format. Building a tool meant porting it for LangChain, AutoGPT, OpenAI's Assistants API, Anthropic's tool use, etc.

With MCP: you write a server once. Any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, your own agent) can use it.