MCP Claude

An MCP is a connector that lets Claude use tools and data outside the chat: your files, your email, a browser or a database. You add it from Claude's connector settings or from Claude Code and, from then on, the AI can look things up or do things in that tool when you ask it to. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic introduced at the end of 2024 that other AIs now understand too.

Without connectors, the AI only sees what you paste into the conversation; with an MCP you give it hands. There are local ones, which are a small program running on your computer, and remote ones, which are an online service you connect to with your account. What confuses people most at first is that MCP isn't a single program: it's the common language, and each tool needs its own connector. The other thing to be clear about is that giving access means the AI can read and, depending on the permissions, also delete or send. Don't blindly accept every action it proposes.

I work mainly with Claude and MCPs are part of my daily routine, so I've had to learn by trying, getting it wrong and trying again. Which ones I use, how they're installed and what the risk is of giving it access to everything, I explain in "How I connected artificial intelligence to my tools". If you're just starting, my advice is not to install ten at once: one, understand what it does and what it can touch, and then the next.