Agents, MCP & Orchestration
What an agent is, how tools and MCP work, and how to make them reliable.
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What is MCP (the Model Context Protocol), and why does everyone suddenly care?
MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for connecting AI models to tools, files, and apps. Think of it as a USB-C port for AI: one plug instead of a custom cable for every model-and-tool combination. Anthropic introduced it in late 2024. By 2026 OpenAI and Google support it too, and it's governed by the Linux Foundation.
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What is an AI agent, and how is it different from a chatbot?
An AI agent is software built around a language model that pursues a goal on its own. You give it an objective, and it plans the steps, calls tools or APIs to act, checks the result, and repeats until it finishes or needs you. A chatbot answers one message at a time. An agent runs a loop and takes actions in between.
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What is agentic AI, and how is it different from a regular AI model?
Agentic AI is AI that takes a goal and runs with it, planning the steps, calling external tools, and looping until the work is finished. A regular model answers a prompt and stops. An agentic system makes decisions and takes actions on its own, checking in with you only when it has to.
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Why do AI agents still get things wrong, and how do good systems stay safe?
AI agents get things wrong because small per-step errors compound across long tasks, and because fluent, confident output makes people accept wrong answers. As of 2026 no method eliminates this. What reduces it: grounding answers in real sources, watching what the agent does, gating irreversible actions behind a human, and reusing steps already proven to work.
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What is a remote MCP server, and how is it different from a local one?
A remote MCP server is an MCP server that runs on the internet rather than on your computer. You connect to it with a URL and an API key, with no install and nothing to maintain. Your AI client sends it a request and gets back a result, the same as it would with a local server, except the server is someone else's problem.