MCP

MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is a shared standard for letting an AI assistant talk to the world outside the chat box: your calendar, a database, a company wiki, a code repository. Before it, every tool needed its own custom connection; MCP is the common plug that means one integration works everywhere.

It matters because it is what turns a chatbot into something that can actually do things with your own data and services. As more apps support it, the assistant you use can reach more of your tools without each company reinventing the plumbing. The flip side is security: anything an assistant can connect to is also something that has to be granted access carefully.