We've been using Claude Code as our primary development tool for months now. Out of the box, it's incredibly capable--reading files, editing code, running commands, searching codebases. But it has limits. It can't browse the web. It can't control a browser. It can't remember what you were working on yesterday.

Enter MCP.

What is MCP?

MCP--Model Context Protocol--is Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data sources. Think of it as "USB-C for AI." (Although personally I really hate that analogy; it's a standard. Any pattern or industry agreed on standard is just as applicable.)

Anthropic released MCP on November 25, 2024, and the ecosystem exploded. Block, Apollo, Zed, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph were early adopters. Within weeks, dozens of MCP servers appeared for everything from databases to design tools.

After experimenting with plenty of MCP servers and Claude plugins, four tools have become absolutely essential to how we work. Here's why we can't live without them.