The Next Web

Rise of model context protocol in the agentic era

We have all heard about model context protocol (MCP) in the context of artificial intelligence. In this article, we will dive into what MCP is and why it is becoming more important by the day. When AP ...
Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Launches Azure Skills Plugin to Give AI Coding Agents Real Azure Expertise

Microsoft's new Azure Skills Plugin bundles curated Azure skills, the Azure MCP Server, and the Foundry MCP Server into a single install that gives AI coding agents both the expertise and execution ...

Bluente Launches Open-Source MCP Server, Bringing Format-Preserving Document Translation Directly Into AI Workflows

New integration lets AI agents translate documents across 120+ languages without leaving the tools developers and ...

Manufact raises $6.3M as MCP becomes the ‘USB-C for AI’ powering ChatGPT and Claude apps

Manufact, a Y Combinator startup, raised $6.3 million to build open-source tools and cloud infrastructure for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the fast-growing standard backed by Anthropic and OpenAI ...
Visual Studio Magazine

Hands On: Building an MCP Server with VS Code AI Toolkit's New Tool Catalog

Microsoft's AI Toolkit extension for VS Code now lets developers scaffold a working MCP server in minutes. Here's what that looks like in practice -- including the parts that don't work, and a simpler ...