🧠 Agent Engineering Wiki

TL;DR

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard way to describe, discover, and call tools so any MCP-speaking agent can use any MCP server. It collapses the N×M problem of bespoke integrations into a common interface — the agent equivalent of "speak HTTP" instead of writing a custom client per service.

State of the art

MCP is moving from a client-side convenience to production infrastructure. Vendors are shipping official servers — HashiCorp's Terraform MCP server reached GA so agents can drive Terraform Registry APIs, and reference builds wire up SaaS servers (Amazon Quick, Cisco Webex) into working assistants. The actuation surface is expanding to the browser: WebMCP is in Chrome origin trials, letting a site expose JavaScript functions and HTML forms as tools to an in-page agent. Crucially, the protocol's growth is forcing the governance layer — Claude's enterprise managed authorization provisions MCP connectors org-wide through an identity provider (Okta first), so connector access and authorization are configured centrally rather than per user. That move from "connect a tool" to "govern a fleet of connectors" is the sign of a maturing standard.

What's new

MCP is crossing into governed, GA infrastructure: a GA Terraform server, browser actuation via WebMCP origin trials in Chrome, and centrally managed connector authorization through enterprise identity providers — i.e. the boring, load-bearing pieces, not just demos.

Trade-offs

A shared protocol buys interoperability and reuse, but every connector you expose is a new permission and a new attack surface — MCP standardizes *access*, which makes authorization and blast-radius the hard part (see prompt injection). It also adds a moving dependency: server quality, versioning, and uptime become yours to manage, and a misbehaving or malicious server is now reachable by every agent that speaks the protocol. Best when you have many tools and many agents; overkill for a single hardcoded integration.

Why it matters for platform engineers

MCP is the integration layer you adopt instead of writing API wrappers — it turns tool connectivity into a fleet you provision and govern (identity-provider auth, per-connector permissions) rather than scattered glue code. The platform job shifts accordingly: from building connectors to running a connector registry safely, which is squarely an infra-and-security responsibility.

Addresses