Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
An exchange protocol through which an agent housed in one tool retrieves context held by another system and acts on it, without the two tools having been integrated with each other.
Full definition
The acronym stands for Model Context Protocol. In its technical acceptation, it designates a convention of exposure: a system declares the resources it makes available and the actions it authorizes, an agent connects to them and uses them.
In the articles on this blog, the term is used for its function in an ecosystem rather than for its mechanics. It occupies there the place the API held when SaaS stopped living in isolation: a standard of openness which, once widespread, becomes a criterion of exclusion — a tool that doesn't carry it loses more in compartmentalization than it gains in functionality.
What it changes can be read in one example: Figma retrieving a GitLab repository's recent changes and the relevant merge requests stops designing beside the real product.
Usage in the field
Used to situate what could lift the compartmentalization of specialized tools, and to evaluate a tool on what it can read outside itself rather than on its functional scope.
Synonyms and variants
"Context exchange protocol" in usages that don't want to commit to a particular standard.
Not to be confused with
- API — an interface exposing data and operations in a stable format known in advance, meant to be called by a program written for it. MCP exposes material meant to be interpreted by a model, not consumed by a fixed contract.
- Integration — a connection built between two specific tools, to be maintained for each pair. The protocol aims to make that connection unnecessary.
- Context — Context — what a model has available to answer with. MCP is a means of feeding that context, it is not that context.
Examples
"Just as APIs became indispensable when SaaS stopped living in isolation, MCPs could become essential as agents become widespread."
Ambiguities / debates
The term is used in the singular as a protocol and in the plural as connectors ("plug in an MCP"), which keeps up a confusion between the standard and its implementations. And nothing guarantees its stability: the role described here is that of a standard of openness, which this protocol may occupy, or another.