Glossary

Terms

MCP

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI clients connect to external tools and data sources through a common interface.

MCP server

An MCP server is a program or hosted endpoint that exposes tools, resources or prompts to an MCP client.

MCP client

An MCP client is the AI application that connects to MCP servers, lists their tools and decides when to call them.

Tool call

A tool call is a request from the model, routed by the client, to run one named tool with structured arguments.

Remote MCP

Remote MCP is a server hosted at a URL that clients reach over HTTP, so nothing needs to run on the user's machine.

OAuth

OAuth is a sign-in standard that lets a client act for a user after the user approves access in a browser, without sharing a password.

Prompt injection

Prompt injection is text placed inside content an AI reads, written to make the model follow instructions the user never gave.

Context window

The context window is the amount of text a language model can consider at once, including the prompt, the conversation and tool results.

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