Skip to main content

Model Context Protocol

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that defines how AI agents connect to external tools and data sources. Instead of building custom integrations for every service an agent needs, developers expose capabilities through MCP servers and connect to them through MCP clients, using a single, model-agnostic protocol.

With open-source libraries available in Python, TypeScript, Java, C#, Go, and more, alongside a rapidly growing ecosystem of thousands of MCP servers, MCP is becoming the de facto standard for how agents and tools integrate.

Benefits of MCP​

  • Standardized integration: MCP replaces fragmented, per-service integrations with a single protocol. An agent built against MCP can connect to any compliant server without custom adapter code.
  • Dynamic tool discovery: Agents discover available tools at runtime rather than compile time, enabling flexible architectures where servers can be added, updated, or removed without redeploying clients.
  • Model-agnostic: MCP works across LLM providers and agent frameworks.
  • Separation of concerns: Tool logic lives in MCP servers, while agent logic lives in clients. Teams can develop, deploy, and scale each side independently.

Production challenges with MCP​

MCP standardizes how agents connect to tools, but many production concerns still need to be handled outside the protocol: authentication, authorization, downstream governance, reliability, observability, and operations.

MCP Server​

In Catalyst, an MCP Server is any application registered as an App ID that exposes an MCP-compliant endpoint. Catalyst handles authentication (bearer middleware for JWT validation), access policies (per-App-ID allow/deny rules), resiliency (retries, timeouts, circuit breakers), and mTLS — without requiring any changes to MCP server code.

MCP Catalog​

The MCP Catalog is Catalyst's registry of available MCP servers across a project. Agents discover servers at runtime through the Catalog rather than hard-coding endpoints, enabling flexible architectures where tool providers can be added or updated without redeploying clients.

For tutorials on building MCP servers and clients on Catalyst, see Develop with MCP. For the reference index of the Catalog, see MCP servers reference. For access policy configuration, see Policies.

Last updated on