Anthropic shares new method to connect AI chatbots to data hubs
Anthropic on Monday open-sourced a new protocol to connect data hubs to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Called Model Context Protocol (MCP), the company claimed it can overcome the limitations of traditional data integration methods and solve the problem of data silos. The AI company also offers local MCP support in the Claude Desktop apps and an open-source repository of MCP servers. Notably, the company also offers pre-built MCP servers for Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Git, Puppeteer, and more.
Anthropic open source model context protocol
Although large language models (LLMs) are pre-trained on massive data sets, they are often insufficient, especially when an AI chatbot needs to perform specific tasks. Additionally, the ability to upload files and folders to AI systems to receive contextually aware responses to them has become a crucial functionality of these tools.
However, when it comes to interacting with external datasets and knowledge hubs, AI models face several challenges. At a macro level, this mainly arises because each external data source has unique ways in which the AI can scrape and process the information. On a deeper level, the problem also arises from the lack of a single protocol that AI developers can follow to access said data sources.
As a result, each AI system behaves differently when interacting with different external knowledge centers, and the success of its results can vary greatly. In one blog postAnthropic has shared its Model Context Protocol (MCP), which can solve this problem. The company says MCP is a universal, open standard for connecting AI systems to data sources and replaces fragmented integrations with a single protocol.
The biggest advantage of this is a reliable way to give AI systems access to the data they need, the company emphasizes. The company has open sourced three components of MCP for developers: MCP specifications and software development kits (SDKs), local MCP servers for Claude Desktop apps, and a repository of MCP servers.
In addition, the AI company also shared pre-built MCP servers for popular enterprise systems such as Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Git, Postgres and Puppeteer. Anthropic stated that companies like Block and Apollo have already integrated MCP into their systems, while development tool companies like Zed, Replit, Codeium, and others use MCP to enhance their platforms.
Anthropic said it will soon provide developer toolkits to deploy MCP servers for remote production that can help companies connect AI systems to their organization’s data hubs.
