MCP MCP… what’s this annoying MCP thing I keep seeing everywhere? What does it even mean?
Just another annoying AI buzzword that will die out soon right?
If you think that then you are dead wrong. This is HUGE.
MCP is massive new invention that is going to change everything.
It’s a major milestone for LLMs and agents and the AI revolution in general.
Bla bla bla… what does it mean Tari?? Start talking or GTFO!
Okay okay I will now but you really need to understand just how much of a game changer this is.
So this is the part where I tell you that MCP is an acronym that means Model Context Protocol — but that wouldn’t be saying much and I’ll be boring you to sleep.
The best thing is to give you a fascinating and powerful real-world analogy that you will understand instantly without even trying.
Think of the brain. The human brain.
Your brain is incredibly powerful — far far more intelligent than all the other species (combined??). Not even close.
But have you ever realized that your brain is… USELESS?!
Duuuude just effin explain MCP for me, I didn’t ask for your insults
No listen I’m not calling you dumb or anything like that — what I mean is — your brain can’t DO anything on it’s own, as far as the external world is concerned.
The only way your brain actually does anything in the physical world is by being connected to the rest of your body.
You could be the greatest genius the universe has ever seen.
You could THINK of the most beautiful poem, the most persuasive argument, the funniest joke in history…
You could IMAGINE the next great novel, the blueprint for a world-changing invention, the cure cancer…
You may KNOW where you want to go — the perfect destination, the goal, the person to meet, the protest to join, the stage to walk onto…
But without your biological tools — your mouth, your eyes, your hands, your feet… without these things, you are as good as non-existent.
There will absolutely nothing you can DO. You are completely powerless as far as the outside world is concerned.
So are you getting it now? This is the problem we’ve had with LLMs.
Since 2022 they’ve wowed us with their insane creativity and coding and summarization ability and so much more.
But they couldn’t really DO anything.
All they did was provide us with information. Even when AI agents came along, all they could do was reason and think (“think”).
It was our brains that then used the information to manually make things happen in the world.
This is what MCP changes forever.
They can think and process information, and now also perform real world actions.
They can get crucial data from ANY external data source to do ANYTHING.
AI agents are now in absolute god mode.
With MCP Servers the possibilities are now literally endless.
MCP Server. That’s just the name for anything that provide tools to an AI agent.
The MCP Server provides the tools. MCP tells it HOW to provide the tools.
For example:
- GitHub MCP Server: provides tools that let’s the AI agent search any GitHub repo.
- WhatsApp MCP Server: provides tools that let you search WhatsApp chats.
You see the real game changer of MCP is NOT actually about what all these incredible MCP Servers let you do.
Before MCP it was already somewhat possible to make LLMs interact with external services. For example manipulate the prompt or fine-tuning the model to provide some sort of JSON response of tools to call.
This was what platforms like AutoGPT and BabyAGI tried to do. It’s also why OpenAI and Google added function calling support to their models.
The main problem with these different attempts is exactly that — they were different. Or private like for GPT and Gemini function calling.
There was no standard and open way to let anyone create an AI agent that could have external tools plugged into it. Or to create tools to plug into any AI agent.
But now MCP has changed all that.
Now anyone can create programs that provide tools to make AI agents more powerful — without knowing anything about the agents beforehand.
That’s why we’ve been calling MCP the USB-C of AI applications.
USB-C standardized how tons of devices that needs to send all sorts of data to each other communicate.
Now as a manufacturer you no longer need to worry about the specific devices your users have and could need to connect your product to.
Just make sure it comes with a USB-C port and you’re good.
They can connect it to all the other billions of devices in the world that connect to USB-C — to provide or receive power or any kind of data.
And not just existing devices but ALL future devices — as long as they also support it.
This is the same game-changing thing MCP lets us do.
No more need for prompt manipulation or model-specific function calling.
And anyone can create agentic apps to use these tools, without knowing anything about the tools beforehand.
As long as the AI agent creator and MCP Server maker abide by the protocol, they will work with each other.
So that why it is really major milestone for the AI revolution.
Anything you can write code to do — an AI agent can do now.
Search your files in the cloud, update databases, control smart switches…
It drastically makes your AI agents waaay way more powerful — making YOU more powerful.