Model Context Protocol (MCP)
An open protocol, introduced by Anthropic in November 2024, that lets AI applications connect to external tools, data sources, and services through a standard client-server interface.
MCP defines how an AI agent (the client) discovers and calls "tools" and reads "resources" exposed by a server — a software vendor's product, for example — without custom integration code per pairing. A vendor that publishes an official MCP server lets any MCP-compatible agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and others) search its data, take actions, or pull structured records directly, rather than the agent having to scrape a webpage or guess at an undocumented API. Crail treats "does this vendor publish and maintain a real MCP server" as one of six inputs into its agent-readiness score.
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