On November 25, 2024, Anthropic open-sourced the Model Context Protocol, a standard for connecting AI applications to external systems such as files, databases, search engines, and workflows. The official documentation describes it as a standardized way to connect AI applications to external systems, comparing it to a USB-C port for AI. The point is interoperability: a developer can build a server once and have it work across many AI clients, rather than building each connection one at a time.