AI Governance Engineer
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MCP

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Model Context Protocol: an open protocol for connecting AI applications to tools and data sources; its 2026 specification adds OAuth 2.1 resource-server patterns and issuer-bound credentials for agent authorisation 1. It secures the hop between one client and one server; which agent sits behind the client is for a workload identity to say.

Developed in
ch. 23, MCP authorization as of 2026-07-28
ch. 04, Layer 04: Runtime Controls & Observability
Chapters
ch. 04, The Stack · ch. 05, Patterns · ch. 23, AI Agents
Contrast with
A2A (Agent2Agent protocol)
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

4 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Patterns that use this term

One pattern page uses the term.

  • CIMD

    Client ID Metadata Document: the mechanism by which an OAuth client identifies itself with a URL, used as its client ID, that points to its metadata document.

  • Guardian agent

    An AI agent whose job is to supervise, check or constrain other agents at runtime; Gartner predicts guardian-agent technologies will account for at least 10…

  • Prompt injection

    An input that alters a model's behaviour or output in ways its designers did not intend.

  • Token passthrough

    The anti-pattern in which a server accepts a token that was not issued to it and forwards it, unmodified, to a downstream API, which may then trust it as if…

  • Workload identity

    The attributable identity a workload such as an agent carries across every hop, under which its actions are logged and its access is revoked, typically a…

Sources

  1. [1] Model Context Protocol specification 2026-07-28 (OAuth 2.1 resource servers; Client ID Metadata Documents; issuer-bound credentials). Anthropic / MCP. 2026-07-28. https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-07-28/ (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). MCP. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/mcp. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026mcp,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{MCP}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/mcp}
}