MCP is often introduced as an integration convenience, but its deeper value is architectural. It gives agents a typed way to access tools, resources, and prompts, which means context can be exposed through governed interfaces rather than improvised glue code.
Context is not just text in a window. In production systems, context includes permissions, document provenance, tool state, user role, session history, and the boundary between what the model may read and what it may change. Without an interface discipline, those boundaries become informal.
The future of context management will not be won by larger windows alone. It will be won by systems that can decide what context is relevant, allowed, current, and auditable.