---
title: "Model Context Protocol"
canonical: "https://canmyagentuse.com/specs/mcp"
contentKind: "specification"
locale: "en"
description: "Revision-aware reference for the protocol connecting agent hosts and clients to tools, resources, prompts, and related server capabilities."
llmSummary: "MCP is a JSON-RPC protocol family with asymmetric client and server roles. Compatibility must be evaluated by primitive, transport, authorization profile, revision, and surface."
publishedAt: "2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z"
updatedAt: "2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z"
verifiedAt: null
tags: ["mcp","tools","context","protocol"]
---

# Model Context Protocol

MCP is a JSON-RPC protocol family with asymmetric client and server roles. Compatibility must be evaluated by primitive, transport, authorization profile, revision, and surface.

- HTML: https://canmyagentuse.com/specs/mcp
- JSON: https://canmyagentuse.com/api/v1/specs/mcp.json
- Markdown: https://canmyagentuse.com/specs/mcp.md

MCP is not one boolean capability. Tools, resources, prompts, sampling, elicitation, roots, tasks, transports, and authorization are independent questions with direction-specific roles.

Catalog assertions should pin this revision (or another named revision), identify the exact harness surface, and retain transport, authorization, plan, policy, and runtime conditions as qualifiers. A broad product statement that it “supports MCP” is discovery evidence, not proof of every primitive.

## Revision identity

- Authority: MCP project / AAIF ecosystem
- Revision: 2026-07-28
- Maturity: published
- Structure: JSON-RPC, normative prose, and a TypeScript schema
- Canonical specification: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2026-07-28
- Roles: host, client, server