MCP Explained: The Protocol Every AI Tool Now Uses

You have probably seen “MCP” everywhere lately. Every AI tool seems to support it now. But what is it actually? The problem before MCP Imagine you have 10 AI tools and 20 data sources. Databases, APIs, file systems, Slack, GitHub. Each AI tool needed its own custom integration with each data source. That is 200 different integrations to build and maintain. Developers called this the N×M problem. What MCP does Model Context Protocol is a standard. Like USB-C, but for AI. ...

April 6, 2026 · 3 min