A brief introduction to the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Written by
Jasper Cole
Updated on:July-09th-2025
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Explore the new era of artificial intelligence interaction, MCP opens a new chapter in programming and AI collaboration.

Core content:
1. The origin and definition of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
2. How MCP simplifies the data interaction process of AI applications
3. The working principle and operation guide of MCP in practical applications

Yang Fangxian
Founder of 53AI/Most Valuable Expert of Tencent Cloud (TVP)

1. What is MCP?

 MCP originated from an article published by Anthropic on November 25, 2024  : Introducing the Model Context Protocol .

MCP (Model Context Protocol) defines how context information is exchanged between applications and AI models. It aims to establish a unified context interaction method between AI models and development environments. By providing standardized access to context information, MCP enables AI models to better understand and process code.

The value of MCP

For example, in the past, in order to allow large models and other AI applications to use our data, we either had to copy and paste or upload and download, which was very troublesome.

Even the most powerful models will be limited by data isolation, forming information islands. To create a more powerful model, each new data source needs to be customized and implemented by itself, making it difficult to expand a truly interconnected system and there are many limitations.

Now, MCP can directly build a bridge between AI and data (including local data and Internet data). Through MCP server and MCP client, as long as everyone follows this set of protocols, they can realize the "Internet of Everything".

2. How do we use MCP?

For users, we don't care how MCP is implemented. Usually we only consider how to use this feature more easily.

For specific usage, please refer to the official documentation:  https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/user

After successful configuration, you can test it in Claude:Can you write a poem and save it to my desktop? Claude will ask for your permission and create a new file locally.

The official also provides a lot of ready-made MCP Servers. Just select the tool you want to connect to and then connect it.

    • https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers

    • https://mcpservers.org/

    • https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers


    3. Principle: How does the model determine the selection of tools?

    When a user asks a question:

    1. The client (Claude Desktop / Cursor) sends your questions to Claude.

    2. Claude analyzes the available tools and decides which one (or more) to use.

    3. The client executes the selected tool through the MCP Server.

    4. The results of the tool's execution are sent back to Claude.

    5. Claude combines the execution results to construct the final prompt and generate a natural language response.

    6. The response is finally displayed to the user.