Model Context Protocol

P2P Protocol

Open JSON-RPC 2.0 protocol specification for connecting AI applications (clients) to external tools, data sources, and capabilities (servers). Defines a small set of primitives — tools (actions), resources (read-only context), and prompts (reusable templates) — over two transports (stdio for local processes, HTTP/SSE for remote servers), with a capability-negotiation handshake on connect. Originally introduced by Anthropic in November 2024 to address the N×M integration problem; donated to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation in December 2025 as neutral infrastructure

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Details

License

MIT (specification and SDKs) — Python, TypeScript, C#, Java, and other reference SDKs

Dev Status 🟢 Active

Dev Status Detail

Released — widely adopted production standard with versioned spec releases (most recent revision 25 Nov 2025); over 10,000 active public MCP servers reported by March 2026

Owner

Agentic AI Foundation (directed fund of the Linux Foundation, co-founded by Anthropic, Block, OpenAI, with support from Google, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, Bloomberg). Originally created and open-sourced by Anthropic

Country

USA (originated at Anthropic, San Francisco; governance now under Linux Foundation)

Start Year 2024

Stack

JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio or HTTP+SSE

Funding

Originally Anthropic; now governed under Linux Foundation directed fund (AAIF) with member support from Anthropic, Block, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, Bloomberg

Last Investigated Jul 1, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

P2P Protocol Attributes

Origins

Anthropic (Nov 2024)

Database

N/A — protocol does not specify or mandate persistence; servers may use any backing store

Query Language

N/A — protocol uses JSON-RPC method calls (initialize, tools/list, tools/call, resources/list, resources/read, prompts/list, prompts/get, sampling/createMessage), not a query language

Data Formats

JSON-RPC 2.0 messages

Collaborative Live Editing

N/A — agent-to-tool protocol, not a collaboration protocol

Rich Text Editing

N/A — protocol carries structured tool inputs/outputs and resource content, not authored documents

Mobile Support

Yes — transport-agnostic; clients run on any platform that can speak JSON-RPC over stdio or HTTP, including Claude mobile and other mobile-hosted clients

Web Support

Yes (HTTP+SSE transport)

Native Apps

Yes (stdio transport for local processes; reference clients include Claude Desktop, Claude Code)

Terms

Open standard, free to implement

Funds

Unknown — Agentic AI Foundation funding details not publicly itemized; member contributions from Anthropic, Block, OpenAI, and other AAIF members fund overall foundation operations

Based On

JSON-RPC 2.0

P2P Architecture

Client–server (not peer-to-peer in the architectural sense; included in OpenHaven on the precedent set by A2A and x402 as an open multi-implementor specification with no single controlling network operator)

Overlay Network

N/A — runs over stdio or HTTP+SSE; no overlay network

Content Addressing

N/A — Resources are URI-addressed by server-defined schemes; protocol does not require content-addressing

Local-First

Yes — stdio transport is local-first by design; servers can run entirely on the user's machine with no network dependency

E2EE

Transport-dependent (HTTPS for remote; local for stdio); no protocol-level E2EE primitive

CRDTs Lib

N/A — protocol does not define replicated data types or merge semantics

Byzantine Fault Tolerance

N/A — single-host single-server interaction model; no consensus or multi-party agreement

Signature

N/A at the protocol layer — message integrity relies on transport (TLS for HTTP+SSE, OS-level for stdio); spec does not define application-layer signatures

Permissions

Capability negotiation handshake; per-tool authorization handled by host application

Semantic Web Compatibility

N/A — Resources use URIs but no semantic-web vocabulary, RDF mapping, or JSON-LD context defined by the protocol

Smart Contract

N/A — no on-chain contracts or cryptoeconomic enforcement

Protocol Stack Position

Application layer — agent-to-tool integration

Asset / Value Embedding

None — MCP carries no native value transfer; companion to x402 (HTTP-payments) and A2A (agent-to-agent) for the agent-economy stack

Protocol Maturity / Standardization

Production-ready; governed under Linux Foundation Agentic AI Foundation