Definition

What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?

An open protocol that standardizes how AI applications provide context and tools to language models.

MCP, developed by Anthropic, defines a standard way for AI tools (like Claude Desktop or Cursor) to connect to external data sources and capabilities. Instead of every AI tool building custom integrations, MCP provides a common interface. Wire generates MCP servers for every context container automatically.

Related concepts
MCP Server

A server that implements the Model Context Protocol, exposing data and tools to MCP-compatible AI clients.

Context Container

A portable, shareable unit of organized context (documents, data, and structured information) made accessible to AI agents through MCP tools.

Further reading
How to Get an MCP Server Without Writing Code Why MCP Failures Are a Context Engineering Problem

All terms

View full glossary
AI Agent Context as a Service Context Container Structured Context Context Engineering Context Portability Context Rot Context Window MCP (Model Context Protocol) MCP Server RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) Fine-Tuning Semantic Search Multi-Agent System Context Compression Context Drift Context Poisoning Prompt Caching Wire

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