Glossary MCP
MCP
Also known as:
Model Context ProtocolAgenticAI
Definition
Model Context Protocol: a standard for exposing tools and resources to an agent from a separate process — a browser, a database, a design tool — so the harness need not know each one
An MCP server publishes what it can do; the harness lists it; the agent calls it like any other tool. It is how one session drives Chrome, Playwright, Railway and Figma without any of them being built in.
The value is the seam: a tool written once serves any harness that speaks the protocol. The cost is that every server is more surface the sandbox has to reason about. The Dictionary of AI Coding has a longer treatment.