MCP: Origins and Requests For Startups — Theodora Chu, Model Context Protocol PM, Anthropic
Jun 18, 2025 · 17:45
Theodora Chu, product manager at Anthropic, explains the origin of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open-source standard for giving LLMs agency to interact with external tools and data, born from two engineers copying context manually. She details MCP's evolution from an internal hack week project to wide adoption by Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and coding tools like Cursor and VS Code. Key protocol decisions include optimizing for server simplicity over client complexity, adding streamable HTTP for bidirectionality, and fixing authentication via community contributions. Chu outlines three startup opportunities: building high-quality MCP servers for verticals beyond dev tools (80% weight), simplifying server building with hosting/testing/deployment tooling, and creating AI security and observability tools. She emphasizes that models are a third user of servers, so tool design must consider end users, client developers, and the model itself.
