AI's most important protocol is getting a little bit easier to use

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is one of the basic building blocks of AI interoperability, giving AI models a secure way to access external data sources and services. It’s the plumbing that lets a chatbot reach into your calendar, your database, or your internal tools, instead of engineers building custom pipes for every connection. Next week, that protocol is getting a significant update, and while it might not be noticeable to end users, it could make a big difference in how the ecosystem develops.

The official spec for the new version has been public since May, but we got an unusually clear explanation of the changes Monday morning from the folks at Arcade — a two-year-old startup that’s built its entire business around the work of getting AI agents to actually function inside real companies, letting them securely connect to and act on tools like Gmail, Slack, and Salesforce.