Glossary — Tools
MCP
MCP is an open standard that connects an AI model to outside data and tools — one common plug instead of building every connection separately.
Simply put#
A USB-C port for AI. Before it, every connection — a calendar, a database, a company's files — had to be built on its own, again for each AI. With MCP the work is done once by whoever owns the data, and any model that speaks MCP can use it.
Anthropic published the standard, but it did not stay one company's: Claude, ChatGPT and the editors VS Code and Cursor all support MCP today.
Example#
When an assistant can check your calendar, read your company's documents or query a database, that is usually MCP underneath. The server you set up once then works with all of them.
Why it matters to you#
The model knows nothing about your company — it knows language, not your numbers. MCP is what connects it to your data, and therefore where it is decided what it may see. If you are weighing up adopting AI, that question matters more than which model you pick.