MCP One Year In
10 articles in series
Ten essays on the Model Context Protocol's first two years — the December 2025 handoff to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, 97 million monthly SDK downloads, the July 2026 stateless rewrite, the 9,652-server registry, and the security audit that found 82% of servers vulnerable to path traversal.
Where MCP Goes From Here: The Roadmap Past 10K Servers
MCP is closing in on 10,000 registry servers with a stateless architecture and neutral governance behind it. What has to happen next for it to hold?
What MCP Got Right That Earlier Plugin Standards Didn't
AI tool-integration standards have failed before. MCP's design and governance choices explain why this one reached 9,652 servers when others stalled.
Picking MCP Servers You Can Actually Trust in 2026
With 82% of audited MCP servers vulnerable to path traversal, picking one to connect to your systems needs a real checklist. Here's a practical one.
Why Vendor Neutrality Mattered More Than Anyone Expected
MCP's Linux Foundation handoff wasn't symbolic. It changed how competing labs, enterprises, and long-tail builders actually behaved. Here's the mechanism.
Business Application Servers: MCP's Enterprise Second Wave
950+ of MCP's 9,652 registry servers are built for customer service, sales, and internal ops. That's the signal a protocol is maturing past hobbyist adoption.
The MCP Security Audit Nobody Wanted to Read (82% Path Traversal)
A 2026 audit of 2,600+ MCP servers found 82% vulnerable to path traversal, 67% to code injection. Why it happened, and what a safe server looks like.
9,652 Servers and Counting: What's Actually in the MCP Registry
The MCP Registry hit 9,652 latest server records by May 2026. A tour of what's actually in there — the enterprise wave, the long tail, and what it means.
Inside the Stateless Rewrite: Why MCP Had to Give Up Persistent Connections
The 2026-07-28 MCP spec traded persistent connections for a stateless architecture. Here's the scaling problem that forced the trade, and what it cost.
What 97 Million Downloads a Month Actually Tells You
MCP's SDKs pull ~97M monthly downloads. That number is real, impressive, and mostly the wrong thing to be looking at. Here's what to check instead.
MCP Went From Anthropic Side Project to Linux Foundation Standard
In 14 months MCP went from an internal Anthropic spec to a Linux Foundation standard. Here's why handing away control was the move that made it win.