Model Context Protocol
Understand MCP as a standard interface between models and external tools and data sources.
Draft
Model interaction
Draft page
This page is an outline. It describes what will be covered and is not yet complete technical documentation.
The Model Context Protocol standardises how a model-facing application connects to tools and data sources, so that integrations can be written once and reused across clients rather than rebuilt per application.
This page introduces the concepts and where MCP fits relative to plain function calling.
What you will learn
- What problem MCP standardises, and for whom.
- The roles of host, client and server in the protocol.
- How MCP relates to and differs from direct function calling.
- What to consider before exposing internal systems through an MCP server.
Recommended outline
This page is an outline. The subsections below are the planned structure; they are filled in as the handbook is written.