{
  "dataset": "protocols",
  "record": {
    "id": "mcp",
    "name": "MCP",
    "full_name": "Model Context Protocol",
    "layer": "capability",
    "creator": "Anthropic (now governed under the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation)",
    "status": "de facto standard",
    "year": 2024,
    "one_liner": "The USB-C of agent tooling: a single JSON-RPC interface for connecting any agent to any tool, data source, or service.",
    "spec_url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io",
    "snippet": "{ \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"tools/call\", \"params\": { \"name\": \"search\", \"arguments\": { \"q\": \"...\" } } }",
    "abbreviation": "MCP",
    "also_known_as": [
      "Model Context Protocol"
    ],
    "canonical_spec_url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25",
    "entity_uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_Context_Protocol",
    "taxonomy_layer": "capability",
    "sub_layer": "tool-calling",
    "protocol_type": "tooling",
    "central_problem": "Gives an AI agent a single, uniform interface to call any external tool, data source, or service instead of bespoke per-integration glue.",
    "maintainer": "Model Context Protocol project (Anthropic + community), hosted by the Agentic AI Infrastructure Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation",
    "governance_body": "AAIF",
    "license": "MIT (spec and SDKs)",
    "maturity_tag": "production-ready",
    "current_spec_version": "2025-11-25",
    "spec_date": "2025-11-25",
    "launch_date": "2024-11-25",
    "last_verified": "2026-06-15",
    "transport": "JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio or Streamable HTTP",
    "core_mechanism": "An MCP client (the agent host) connects to one or more MCP servers; servers advertise tools, resources, and prompts, and the client invokes them with typed JSON-RPC calls (tools/list, tools/call). A November 2025 revision adds an experimental async Tasks primitive.",
    "discovery_endpoint": "JSON-RPC initialize + tools/list (server-advertised; no fixed URL path)",
    "settlement_type": null,
    "adoption_metric": {
      "value": "Hosted under AAIF as a load-bearing project; broad SDK and vendor support across the agent ecosystem",
      "verify_status": "verify-against-primary-at-build",
      "source_hint": "https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol",
      "note": "No single audited adoption number asserted; AAIF hosting confirmed via research §2."
    },
    "notable_adopters": [
      {
        "value": "Anthropic",
        "source": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io"
      }
    ],
    "relationships": [
      {
        "predicate": "governed_by",
        "target": "aaif",
        "note": "MCP -governed_by-> AAIF (research §2 seed triple)"
      },
      {
        "predicate": "complements",
        "target": "a2a",
        "note": "A2A complements MCP; MCP handles agent→tool, A2A handles agent→agent"
      },
      {
        "predicate": "discovered_by",
        "target": "agents-json",
        "note": "agents.txt/agents.json-class discovery files can point agents to MCP endpoints"
      }
    ],
    "ideal_use_case": "Connecting an LLM agent to your data sources, internal tools, or SaaS APIs through one standard interface.",
    "when_to_use": "When agents need to take actions or read structured data from tools/services and you want one integration surface instead of N bespoke ones.",
    "when_not_to_use": "When you only need an agent to read content (use Layer-1 discovery files like llms.txt), or when the interaction is agent-to-agent coordination (use A2A).",
    "code_example": "{ \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"id\": 1, \"method\": \"tools/call\", \"params\": { \"name\": \"search\", \"arguments\": { \"q\": \"agentic web\" } } }",
    "source": "Spec version/date: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25 (latest stable, 2025-11-25). Governance (AAIF hosts MCP): competitive-research-2026-06.md §2.",
    "agent_readiness_link": "agent-readiness/mcp",
    "layer_legacy": "tool"
  }
}