Twilio has jumped on the MCP bandwagon by releasing a new server that promises to change how businesses utilize AI assistants.
MCP – or Model Context Protocol – is an open standard developed by Anthropic.
Essentially, it provides a standardized way for AI agents – like Claude – to access external data and tools via a client-server architecture.
In doing so, it decouples AI agents from custom integrations, standardizing how they discover and take action within external systems.
“Before MCP, integrating an AI agent with APIs – like Twilio’s – meant building manual, custom setups, not just for each endpoint, but for every different agent,” said Alex Goldman, a Developer Evangelist at Twilio, during a YouTube update. “It was like hand-building a new road every time you needed to travel. At scale? Total chaos.
MCP changes everything. It’s like replacing all those handmade roads with a standardized interstate highway. Agents can now securely discover, understand, and interact with tools effortlessly and consistently.
With its new Twilio Alpha MCP Server, Twilio aims to bring MCP to its customers.
The server covers over 1,400 API endpoints across messaging, voice, account management, and beyond.
Of course, there are limits to how many systems an MCP client can plug into.
As such, Twilio has built an intelligent filtering capability into its server, which ensures agents dynamically access only the systems they need to complete a task.
Developers may also access an open-source converter, transforming open API specifications into MCP-compatible servers. As such, they don’t have to map out all their endpoints, making integrations “faster and easier than ever.”
MCP Is Just the Beginning for Twilio
Twilio shared examples of how a business could employ an AI assistant – via the MCP server – to check call logs, buy phone numbers, and verify suspicious messages.
While showcasing this, Goldman said:
The bottom line is, if you’re building AI agents that need to interact with the real world, hit APIs, perform actions, and retrieve contextual information, MCP is your key to doing it without reinventing the wheel every single time.
For Twilio, this is just the beginning.
Twilio Alpha’s MCP server will evolve with planned support for Twilio’s Segment CDP, SendGrid Email, and beyond.
Yet, for now, the solution will remain in a developer preview.
“Come their birthday, your AI assistant is going to be begging you to get them MCP,” summarized Goldman.
MCP Is the Hottest Tech Under the Sun
MCP interest is far from exclusive to Twilio; it’s seeping across the entire technology landscape.
Earlier this month, Dharmesh Shah, Founder of HubSpot, underlined the possible impact of this technology across CX operations.
Shah took to LinkedIn and stated: “Someday soon, each of us will have our MCP moment.
He acknowledged that while it won’t be as powerful as the ‘ChatGPT moment’ of 2023, “it will open our eyes to what’s now possible.”
Interestingly, OpenAI also made moves to connect with MCP servers a few weeks ago.
As its developers explained: “We’re also working on MCP support for the OpenAI API and ChatGPT desktop app—we’ll share some more news in the coming months.”
Nevertheless, many organizations will have concerns around MCP.
For instance, they may ask: is my data accurate enough for this to work well? Do we have an adequate permissions model? Will the protocol misunderstand context?
There’s also a small matter of regulatory teams trying to wrap their heads around it.
Nevertheless, MCP offers a fascinating glimpse into a world with more AI agents and less software.
