---
title: Model Context Protocol (MCP)
sidebarTitle: Overview
---

The **Model Context Protocol (MCP)** facilitates real-time communication between MCP clients, such as LLMs, AI agents, and AI applications, and MCP servers like MindsDB.

**MindsDB is an MCP server** that enables intelligent applications to query and reason over federated data from databases, data warehouses, and applications.

## Key Features

* **Unified Data Gateway**

  MindsDB abstracts the complexity of dealing with disparate data sources. It enables AI apps and agents to run powerful, federated queries across structured and unstructured data systems.

* **Seamless User Experience**

  MindsDB enhances MCP implementations with security, monitoring, and governance. It includes built-in integrations to ensure compatibility with traditional and non-MCP applications.

* **Advanced AI Workflows**

  MindsDB supports composite AI operations like multi-source joins and orchestration of different models or services within a single query, which go beyond the native capabilities of most LLMs using MCP alone.

## Protocol Overview

MCP establishes a bidirectional communication channel between clients and servers, enabling LLMs, agents, or apps to execute queries over federated data infrastructures.

<p align="center">
  <img src="/assets/mcp.png" alt="MCP Protocol Flow Diagram" />
</p>

Federated data refers to data distributed across multiple systems, formats, or platforms, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

With MindsDB as your MCP server, you can treat this distributed data as a **single virtual database**.

## How It Works

Here's a simplified overview of the MCP data flow:

1. The client connects to the MCP server.
2. A query is issued from the client to the MCP server.
3. MindsDB routes the query to the appropriate federated data sources.
4. The data sources return results to MindsDB.
5. MindsDB returns unified results back to the client.

This enables AI-native applications to deliver rich, real-time insights over complex enterprise data with minimal integration effort.
