MCP, Plugins and extending the agent

Anyone can describe MCPModel Context Protocol. A standard that lets an AI agent pull in context from outside the repo, like Jira tickets or internal docs. Press Enter for the full definition. from the docs. A DX Engineer has set one up, watched it break and can name the pitfall a developer will hit on their first try.

The Model Context Protocol lets agents reach external tools and data beyond the codebase: a database, an issue tracker, internal APIs, a docs source. The CLI auto-detects and respects mcp.json, so a server configured once is available to the agent without per-run setup.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linear": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@some/linear-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "LINEAR_API_KEY": "${LINEAR_API_KEY}" }
    }
  }
}