Anthropic on Monday open-sourced a new protocol for connecting data hubs to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Dubbed Model Context Protocol (MCP), the company claimed it could overcome the limitations of traditional data integration methods and solve the problem of data silos. The AI firm is also offering local MCP support in cloud desktop apps and an open-source repository of MCP servers. Notably, the company is also offering pre-built MCP servers for Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Git, Puppeteer, and more.
Anthropic Open Source Model Context Protocol
While large language models (LLMs) are pre-trained on massive datasets, they are often not enough, especially when AI chatbots have to perform specific tasks. Additionally, the ability to upload files and folders to AI systems to receive contextually aware feedback about them has become a key functionality of these tools.
However, AI models face many challenges when it comes to interacting with external datasets and knowledge centers. On a macro level, this arises primarily because each different external data source has unique ways in which AI scrapes information and processes it. At a deeper level, the problem also arises due to the lack of a single protocol that AI developers can follow to access said data sources.
As a result, each AI system behaves differently when interacting with different external knowledge centers and the success of the output can vary significantly. In a blog post, Anthropic shared its Model Context Protocol (MCP) that can solve this problem. The company said MCP is a universal, open standard for connecting AI systems to data sources and replaces fragmented integration with a single protocol.
The company highlighted that its biggest benefit is a reliable way to provide AI systems with access to the data they need. The company has open-sourced three components of MCP for developers – the MCP specification and software development kit (SDK), a repository of local MCP servers and MCP servers for cloud desktop apps.
Additionally, the AI firm also shared pre-built MCP servers for popular enterprise systems like Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Git, Postgres, and Puppeteer. Anthropic said companies like Block and Apollo have already integrated MCP into their systems, while development tools companies like Jade, Replit, Codeium, and others are using MCP to improve their platforms.
Anthropic said it will soon provide a developer toolkit for deploying remote production MCP servers that can help enterprises connect AI systems to their organization’s data hub.
