If you don’t know MCP—Model Context Protocol—is the hot, new, open source software layer promising to make connecting LLMs and domain specific software a snap. It originates from Anthropic and promises to “simplify artificial intelligence (AI) integrations by providing a secure, consistent way to connect AI agents with external tools and data sources.“ Already a broad set of companies have announced and even delivered support for MCP including OpenAi, Microsoft, Confluent, Cloudflare, and Cursor to name just a few. The fanfare of these announcements makes many observers quick to anoint a winner. It isn’t that simple though. If it were then innovation would quickly grind to a halt. Here’s why.1
