A Two-Dimensional Study of the Model Context Protocol: Publication and Adoption

2026-09-13

AI Summary

研究通过分析802篇文献和33,319个GitHub仓库，使用BERTopic和GPT-5.6-Luna分类器探讨了MCP协议在学术界和开源社区中的增长及应用情况。

Abstract

The Model Context Protocol (MCP), released by Anthropic in November 2024, standardizes how large language model applications connect to external tools and data sources. Despite MCP's rapid growth, no study has jointly characterized its emergence in the research literature, its adoption on GitHub and the relationship between them. We address this gap with a longitudinal, two-dimensional study of 802 MCP-related publications and 33,319 GitHub repositories. We characterize their growth and identify their application domains via BERTopic and usage contexts via a human-validated GPT-5.6-Luna classifier. We find that publications and repositories began rapid growth within a month of each other in 2025, and peaked together in March 2026. Notably, a second growth wave alone accounts for 49.5% of the GitHub repositories. Most publications (57.8%) and nearly all repositories (93.7%) use MCP as an enabling technology rather than for analyzing, evaluating, extending, or securing it directly. Among repositories, the latter category concentrates almost entirely in one general-purpose topic, while applied usage spreads into product-specific niches. Finally, we provide an overview of the MCP landscape and recommendations to researchers and practitioners in this field.

Problem

• Model Context Protocol
• adoption
• research literature
• GitHub
• relationship

Innovation

• Model Context Protocol
• Longitudinal Study
• GitHub Adoption
• BERTopic
• GPT-5.6-Luna