# Understand what MCP connects

> Trace MCP from its launch to its host, client and server model before connecting another tool.

Source: https://fullbytedeveloper.com/blog/understand-mcp-tools-protocol
Keyword: MCP
Published: 2026-11-05

MCP gives AI applications and external systems a common way to communicate. Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol on November 25, 2024, to reduce the custom integrations needed for each data source. [1]

On December 9, 2025, Anthropic announced its donation to the Agentic AI Foundation, a Linux Foundation fund co-founded with Block and OpenAI. [2]

## Follow one connection

The protocol's architecture uses three participants. The host is your AI application. It creates an MCP client to connect to a server, which exposes capabilities such as tools and resources. A host can maintain several of these client connections. [3]

For example, a database server can expose a query tool and a resource describing the schema. MCP defines how the application discovers and calls those capabilities. [3]

## Check the server before enabling it

I would check who operates the server, what credentials it needs and which actions it exposes. Give a read-only task read-only access where the service supports that restriction. A common protocol does not establish that a particular server deserves your credentials.

The architecture documentation also distinguishes local STDIO connections from remote Streamable HTTP connections. Check which transport your application supports before copying a server configuration. [3]

## Sources

1. [Anthropic introduces MCP](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol)
2. [Anthropic donates MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation](https://www.anthropic.com/news/donating-the-model-context-protocol-and-establishing-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation)
3. [MCP architecture overview](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/2026-07-28/learn/architecture)

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