Anthropic's MCP — a year in, who actually uses it

Model Context Protocol launched as the "USB-C of AI tools". After a year — solid traction with developer tools, slow elsewhere.

MCP gives an LLM a standard way to call external tools and read resources. Claude, Cursor, Cline support it. Big enterprise vendors keep their own protocols.

Where it's working: developer tools (file system, git, databases via MCP servers). Hundreds of community servers exist.

Where it stalled: business apps. Salesforce, Notion, Slack support partially or not at all.

For your stack: worth wiring up Claude Desktop with a custom MCP server if you have internal tools. Skip if you only use one LLM provider that doesn't support it.