Model Context Protocol

MCP is an open standard that defines how LLMs integrate with external tools, data, and context.

Hi everyone 👋

Before today’s topic, a quick note—I stepped away from the newsletter in April after a family loss since I needed time to slow down and just be. I’m back and excited to restart One Minute NLP: one slide, one concept, once a week to help you keep up with NLP/GenAI.

I really appreciate you sticking around. If you’d rather unsubscribe, you can do that anytime at the bottom of this email (or click here if you’re reading the web version).

---

Model Context Protocol

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for giving language models structured access to tools, data, and prewritten prompts. Instead of relying on ad-hoc prompt engineering or custom retrieval pipelines, tools and data sources are exposed to models through MCP servers in a standardized format. Developers can plug in existing tools (both cloud e.g., GitHub, Slack and local e.g., company database) rather than reinvent integrations each time. This approach promotes reusability across models and projects. An MCP client (usually inside an AI app or agent—an MCP Host) is used to query these servers to retrieve information or invoke actions.

Relationship between MCP Host, Clients, and Servers.

For MCP to work, the model (or its agent wrapper) must support tool use. MCP doesn’t overcome model limits like context window size or reasoning errors; it merely provides a standard for managing model context.

Further reading

• Build an MCP Server and Build an MCP Client tutorials by ModelContextProtocol.io — The official MCP documentation is a great place to get started with MCP. The tutorials are easy to follow and can give you a solid grasp of how MCP Servers and Clients work.

• Model Context Protocol servers — This is a very comprehensive list of existing MCP servers.

• Everything Wrong with MCP by Shrivu Shankar — This article does a great job explaining the limitations of MCP.

---

Download complete One Minute NLP

Do you want to use One Minute NLP slides as a quick reference? You can download the complete set of all past One Minute NLP topics here: complete.oneminutenlp.com.

---

Do you want to learn more NLP concepts?

Each week I pick one core NLP concept and create a one-slide, one-minute explanation of the concept. To receive weekly new posts in your inbox, subscribe here:

---

Reach out to me:

• Connect with me on LinkedIn

• Read my technical blog on Medium

• Or send me a message by responding to this post

Is there a concept you would like me to cover in a future issue? Let me know!