What Is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
MCP is the open standard that lets any AI agent connect to any data source - the USB-C of enterprise AI. Uvi ships an MCP server alongside GraphQL.
What MCP is, in one paragraph
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard, introduced by Anthropic in late 2024, for connecting AI agents to data sources and tools. An MCP server exposes a set of typed tools and resources; an MCP client (the agent runtime) discovers them, calls them in natural language or structured form, and reasons over the structured responses. MCP is to AI agents what HTTP was to web browsers: a thin, universal contract that lets implementations on both sides evolve independently.
Why MCP matters for enterprise AI
Before MCP, every agent framework defined its own way to call external systems - LangChain had Tools, OpenAI had Function Calling, custom frameworks had bespoke RPC. Integrating a new data source meant rewriting glue code for each framework. MCP collapses that into one protocol: build the server once, every MCP-aware client (Claude, Cursor, LangChain, LangGraph, custom agents) can call it. For enterprise R&D environments where the same Decision Graph needs to be queried by half a dozen different agent stacks, MCP is the right shape.
How Uvi uses MCP
Uvi exposes an MCP server on top of the customer's Decision Graph. Each typed entity (Task, Pull Request, Feature Flag, Service, Decision) becomes a discoverable MCP tool. Any MCP-aware agent can list the available tools, call them in natural language, and get back a structured chain of decisions, owners, and evidence. The agent does not need to learn Uvi's GraphQL schema or write integration code - the MCP server handles the translation.
MCP vs other agent-tool standards
OpenAI's Function Calling and LangChain Tools both predate MCP and remain widely used inside their respective ecosystems. MCP's contribution is cross-framework portability: a server written once is callable from any client that speaks the protocol. As of 2026, MCP is supported natively by Claude (Anthropic), Cursor, Cline, Continue, and most major open-source agent frameworks. OpenAI added compatibility in 2025.
FAQ
Who created MCP?
Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol in November 2024 as an open standard. The spec is governed openly; servers and clients are implemented by Anthropic, the community, and other LLM vendors.
Is MCP the same as RAG?
No. RAG retrieves document chunks by vector similarity and hands them to a model. MCP defines how an agent calls structured tools that return structured data. You can build a RAG tool that's exposed via MCP, but MCP is the contract, not the retrieval strategy.
Does Uvi require MCP?
No. Uvi exposes both a GraphQL endpoint (for agents that issue structured queries directly) and an MCP server (for agents that prefer natural-language tool calls). Most customers use both depending on the agent stack.
What's the difference between MCP and an API?
An API is a set of endpoints with documented schemas; an MCP server is an API plus a self-description that lets an agent discover the schema at runtime. The agent doesn't need to read docs - the protocol negotiates capabilities.
Go deeper
The full architecture and customer story live on the dedicated page.