Equation 1 · How AI Models Learned to Use Tools: A Protocol History
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the number of distinct hosts — editors, for LSP. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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That parallel is precise enough to formalize, and doing so exposes the actual economic assumption both protocols are making rather than merely asserting it. Let M be the number of distinct hosts — editors, for LSP; agent frameworks and model-serving applications, for MCP — and N be the number of distinct targets — languages, for LSP; tools and data sources, for MCP. Wiring every host to every target independently, the way plugins and early framework wrappers did, requires
Sources cited in the article section
- [10] Introducing the Model Context Protocol ↗
- [11] Specification ↗
- [12] JSON-RPC 2.0 Specification ↗
- [13] Language Server Protocol ↗
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