The technological engine behind this development is not a new mega-model, but an inconspicuous but powerful protocol: the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
The "universal connector" for artificial intelligence
For a long time, the biggest problem with AI agents was fragmentation. If you wanted to build an agent for Slack, you had to learn Slack APIs. If you wanted to connect it to GitHub, you needed a new integration.
MCP has changed that. It acts as a universal interface. Once implemented, an agent can immediately communicate with any software that supports the standard. It is the hardware revolution of "plug-and-play", transferred to the world of software intelligence.
Web-MCP - The Internet becomes "agent-ready"
The most exciting innovation of the current year is the leap from local environments to the open network. While MCP was originally intended to give AI access to local files (e.g. in VS Code), Web-MCP now allows access to remote servers.
websites are no longer optimized just for humans, but offer their services directly to agents via Web-MCP. We are witnessing the rise of SEO 2.0: website operators are no longer just optimizing their content for keywords, but are providing "agent endpoints" so that AIs can find and use their services (such as bookings or data analysis) smoothly.
An industry standard under the flag of the Linux Foundation
One technical highlight is the political and structural maturity of the protocol. After Anthropic donated the protocol to the Linux Foundation at the end of 2025, the path is free from proprietary island solutions.
- Interoperability: Whether you use GPT-5, Claude 4.6 or Gemini 2.0 - they all speak the same "agent language".
- Investment security: Companies only need to make their tools MCP-capable once instead of reinventing the wheel for each new AI model.
Practical check: When AI takes over the CMS
What does this mean in concrete terms? A current example from spring 2026 is the integration in WordPress 6.9. Thanks to native MCP support, agents can now
- Not only write content, but also format and schedule it directly in the backend.
- Monitor plugins and carry out updates or patches independently in the event of incompatibilities.
- Adapt the visual language of the page to current trends by controlling design tools directly via the protocol.
Similar functions will soon be available for Typo3.
Light and shadow: security and lightweight skills
Where agents act autonomously, risks arise. We experienced the first major prompt injection attacks on MCP servers in early 2026. Hackers hid malicious instructions in README files that caused agents to disclose sensitive data from the local file system.
The community's response: lightweight skills. Instead of giving an agent full access to a server, only tiny, strictly isolated chunks of functionality are released. This minimizes the attack surface and also makes the agents faster, as less ballast context has to be transferred.
API vs. MCP: a brief comparison
For the tech decision-makers among you: Here's the key difference between the old world (classic API) and the new world (MCP).
| Feature | Classic API | MCP (Model Context Protocol) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integration | Individual code | Plug-and-play | ||
| Action | Reactive | Proactive (agent searches) | ||
| Context | Manually defined | Agent understands | ||
| Security | API key | Granular authorizations |
Conclusion: The era of autonomous assistants begins now
We are only at the beginning. The next wave (expected in the second half of 2026) will be bidirectional communication. Apps will no longer just wait for commands from the AI, but will actively "summon" the AI when they realize that a problem needs to be solved for the user. The Model Context Protocol is the backbone of this new world. Anyone who makes their software MCP-capable today is building the bridge for the employees of tomorrow: the AI agents.