Decoded #6: API and MCP

An API is how two pieces of software talk. One offers things it can do and another asks for them without ever seeing how the work gets done.

Picture a restaurant. You read a menu, tell the waiter, and the food comes back. The menu is what you can order. The waiter carries the request and returns the result. That is an API, and it was built for human developers to write code against.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an AI-friendly translation layer or wrapper on top of APIs.

MCP is a standard. The API underneath does not change. MCP just makes every source speak to the AI the same way, so the model connects once instead of being wired in source by source.

Useful frame: an API is one service, written for a developer. MCP is the standard that lets an AI reach many of them the same way.