MCP overview

Author: mneedham

docs/use-cases/AI_ML/MCP/index.md

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-description: 'This page contains a landing page with table of contentsfor MCP guides.'
+description: 'This page provides an intro to Model Context Protocol (MCP) and has a table of contents for MCP guides.'
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+import overview from '@site/static/images/use-cases/AI_ML/MCP/mcp_overview.png';
+
+[Model Context Protocol](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol) (MCP) is a standard developed by Anthropic that enables AI models to seamlessly integrate with external systems. This protocol allows AI assistants to connect to data sources, APIs, databases, and more in a secure and standardized way.
+
+MCP creates a universal interface between AI models and various services, eliminating the need for custom tool implementations for each integration. 
+You can think of it as a universal API standard designed specifically for AI systems.
+
+The key advantage of MCP is that AI libraries only need to implement support for the protocol once. 
+After that, all MCP-compatible services become immediately accessible, saving AI library maintainers a lot of time.
+
+## What is MCP's architecture?  {#mcp-architecture}
+
+MCP follows a client-server architecture:
+
+* Clients (like Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code) establish connections with MCP servers. You can see a collection of clients in the [awesome-mcp-clients](https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-clients?tab=readme-ov-file#windsurf) GitHub repository.
+* Servers expose tools and capabilities through standardized interfaces. You can see a collection of servers in the [awesome-mcp-servers](https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers) GitHub repository.
+* AI models can then use these tools to access external data and functionality when needed
+
+A diagram showing the architecture is below:
+
+<Image img={overview} alt="MCP overview" size="lg"/>
+
+The Claude Desktop application acts as a client that can connect to various MCP servers, enabling Claude to interact with external services like Google Drive, web APIs, Google Maps, and databases—including ClickHouse.
+
+## Does ClickHouse have an MCP Server? {#clickhouse-mcp-server}
+
+It does!
+The [ClickHouse MCP Server](https://github.com/ClickHouse/mcp-clickhouse) offers the following tools:
+
+* `run_select_query` - Execute SQL queries on your ClickHouse cluster.
+* `list_databases` - List all databases on your ClickHouse cluster.
+* `list_tables` - List all tables in a database.
+
+
+## Guides for using the ClickHouse MCP Server {#clickhouse-mcp-server-guides}
+
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