Glossary
What is MCP?
An open standard that lets an AI assistant plug into your apps, like Gmail, your calendar or your CRM, through one common kind of connector.
Also written as Model Context Protocol, MCP server.
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. Think of it as a universal plug. Before it, every AI app needed its own custom integration for every tool. With MCP, a tool publishes one MCP server, and any assistant that speaks MCP can use it.
Anthropic introduced it as an open standard in late 2024, and it has since been adopted across the major AI assistants and by a fast growing list of business apps.
Why it matters to a business owner
It turns an assistant that only knows what you paste into it into one that can look things up and act in your own systems: read the latest emails from a client, check tomorrow’s calendar, find a contact in the CRM, create a task. You ask in plain words; the assistant uses the connector.
Two things to know
- A connector gets the access you grant it, so connect only what you need and prefer read only access to start.
- Use connectors published by the app itself or by a source you trust, the same way you would only install a trusted browser extension.
