What Is an MCP Server? A Plain-Language Guide for Developers
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a communication standard that defines how AI applications interact with external tools and data sources, similar to how HTTP governs browser-server communication. Rather than relying solely on training data, AI models can use MCP servers to call external tools — such as fetching live weather or querying a database — and incorporate the results into their responses. An MCP server acts as a bridge, exposing a set of defined capabilities that an AI application can discover and invoke without needing to know the underlying implementation. The protocol allows AI clients like Claude Desktop or Cursor to connect to these servers and expand what the model can do beyond its built-in knowledge. Developers already familiar with REST APIs will find the concept of MCP tool-calling intuitive, as it follows a similar request-response pattern with clearly defined inputs and descriptions.
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