What is the MCP protocol in AI coding tools?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard from Anthropic that lets AI assistants (like Claude) connect to external tools and data sources in a standardized way — databases, file systems, APIs, etc. In coding tools, MCP allows the AI to directly query your database schema, read documentation, or interact with your local dev environment without copy-pasting context manually. Cursor and Claude Code both support MCP.