# MCPs

> **TL;DR.** "MCPs" is the informal plural of [MCP](https://www.

- **Category:** AI / Developer Tools / Infrastructure
- **Stage:** established
- **Age:** 568 days
- **Origin date:** 2024-11-25
- **First detected:** 2026-04-20
- **Canonical URL:** https://earlyterms.com/term/mcps
- **Sources:** 6 primary URLs

## Definition

"MCPs" is the informal plural of [MCP](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol) — the Model Context Protocol Anthropic released on November 25, 2024. When developers say "I kept adding MCPs," they mean [MCP servers](/term/mcp-server) or [MCP tools](/term/mcp-tool) — the concrete primitives an agent loads, not the protocol itself.

No product or standards body uses "MCPs" as a canonical term; it is working-developer shorthand from Claude Code discourse and HN. The searchable buildable nouns are MCP Server (21,000+ indexed on Glama) and MCP Tool (the per-function unit Anthropic's Nov 2025 context-execution post surfaced). Treat "MCPs" as a pluralization artifact — Singapore's Medical Classification / Medicare Plan Scheme dominates the non-AI SERP.

## Analogy

Like saying "APIs" — a casual plural that names the category, not any specific callable endpoint you can ship.

## Why it's emerging now

"MCPs" is a pluralization artifact, not a standalone term — the meaningful units are [MCP Server](/term/mcp-server) and [MCP Tool](/term/mcp-tool), which already have dedicated pages. EarlyTerms logged it because the plural showed up organically in Claude Code workflow posts; the real trend force is MCP the protocol, now 17 months old and widely adopted.

## Related terms

- *alias:* MCP Server
- *alias:* MCP Tool
- *parent:* Model Context Protocol
- *related:* MCP registry
- *related:* MCP marketplace
- *related:* MCP client
- *related:* tool calling
- *related:* agent harness
- *related:* managed agents
- *related:* context engineering

## Sources

1. [Anthropic — Introducing the Model Context Protocol](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol)
2. [Model Context Protocol — official site](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/)
3. [MCP Tools specification](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/concepts/tools)
4. [Anthropic — Code execution with MCP](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/code-execution-with-mcp)
5. [Wikipedia — Model Context Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_Context_Protocol)
6. [Glama MCP server registry (21,000+ servers)](https://glama.ai/mcp/servers)

---
_Generated by EarlyTerms · https://earlyterms.com/term/mcps_