MCP & tool access
Connecting agents to tools and data over the Model Context Protocol, and what that costs.
3 guides · 18 articles · 3 definitions
Definitions in this subject
JSON mode changes what your model answers
Across 44 language models, asking for JSON collapsed answer diversity: distinct answers fell from 52 to 36 and the top answer rose from 41% to 64% of responses.
ArticleStateless MCP: the spec is dropping session state
The 2026 MCP release candidate goes stateless: no initialize handshake, no session ID, any server instance answers any request. What stateless MCP means.
ArticleMCP Tasks: long-running work as context offloading
MCP Tasks let a server return a durable handle instead of a blocking result, keeping a long-running tool call's interim state off the agent's context window.
ArticleYour MCP server is installed. Your agent isn't using it.
Connecting an MCP server is easy. Getting an agent to call its tools on the first relevant turn is where teams lose, and the cause is context.
ArticleWhat Anthropic's context engineering guides leave out
Anthropic's 2026 trilogy on context engineering, tools, and code execution with MCP each assume the same missing layer: the substrate where context lives.
ArticleTool calling is retrieval: what Needle proves at 26M
A 26M-parameter model just matched Gemini at function calling. Here is what Needle's distillation result means for MCP and agent context engineering.
ArticleMCP resources are the underused half of MCP
Every MCP discussion is about tools. The protocol's resources primitive is how you load context without paying for it every turn. Here's how to use it.
ArticleWhy multi-agent AI systems fail at context
Up to 86.7% of multi-agent AI runs fail. Most failures trace back to how agents share context, not the agents themselves. Here's why and how to fix it.
ArticleContext engineering lives in substrates, not harnesses
Codex shipped codex-plugin-cc and AGENTS.md joined the Linux Foundation. The signal is consistent: context engineering is substrate work, not harness work.
ArticleProgressive tool loading is the new MCP context pattern
Preloading every MCP tool into an agent's context is the bottleneck of 2026. Progressive tool loading defers definitions until needed and saves tokens.
ArticleHow to Get an MCP Server Without Writing Code
Over 17,000 MCP servers exist but most are generic dev tools. Here's how to create a custom one for your own data without writing a single line of code.
ArticleYour AI Doesn't Remember You. That's by Design.
94% of IT leaders fear vendor lock-in. Every AI tool traps your context in its own silo. Here's why your AI doesn't remember you, and what's changing.
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