The analogy that was used a lot is that it's essentially USB-C for your data being connected to LLMs. You don't need to fight 4,532,529 standards - there is one (yes, I am familiar with the XKCD comic). As long as your client is MCP-compatible, it can work with _any_ MCP server.
The whole USB C comparison they make is eyeroll inducing, imo. All they needed to state was that it was a specification for function calling.
My gripe is that they had the opportunity to spec out tool use in models and they did not. The client->llm implementation is up to the implementor and many models differ with different tags like <|python_call|> etc.
Clearly they need to try explaining it it easy terms. The number of people that cannot or will not understand the protocol is mind boggling.
I'm with you on an Agent -> LLM industry standard spec need. The APIs are all over the place and it's frustrating. If there was a spec for that, then agent development becomes simply focused on the business logic and the LLM and the Tools/Resource are just standardized components you plug together like Lego. I've basically done that for our internal agent development. I have a Universal LLM API that everything uses. It's helped a lot.
The comparison to USB C is valid, given the variety of unmarked support from cable to cable and port to port.
It has the physical plug, but what can it actually do?
It would be nice to see a standard aiming for better UX than USB C. (Imho they should have used colored micro dots on device and cable connector to physically declare capabilities)
Certainly valid in that just like various usb c cables supporting slightly different data rates or power capacities, MCP doesn't deal with my aforementioned issue of the glue between MCP client and model you've chosen; that exercise is left up to us still.
My gripe with USB C isn't really on the nature, but on the UX and modality of capability discovery.
If I am looking at a device/cable, with my eyes, in the physical world, and ask the question "What does this support?", there's no way to tell.
I have to consult documentation and specifications, which may not exist anymore.
So in the case of standards like MCP, I think it's important to come up with answers to discovery questions, lest we all just accept that nothing can be done and the clusterfuck in +10 years was inevitable.
A good analogy might be imagining how the web would have evolved if we'd had TCP but no HTTP.
100% agree but with private enterprise this is a problem that can never be solved; everyone wants their lock-in and slice of the cake.
I would say for all the technology we have in 2025, this has certainly been one of the core issues for decades & decades. Nothing talks to each other properly, nothing works with another thing properly. Immense effort has to be expended for each thing to talk to or work with the other thing.
I got a Macbook Air for light dev as a personal laptop. It can't access Android filesystem with a phone plugged in. Windows can do it. I know Apple's corporate reasoning, but just an example of purposeful incompatibility.
As you say, all these companies use standards like TCP/HTTP/Wifi/Bluetooth/USB/etc and they would be nowhere without them - but literally every chance they get they try to shaft us on it. Perhaps AI will assist in the future - tell it you want x to work with y and the model will hack on it until the fucking thing works.
