I got the train back from St Ives to London yesterday, so I bashed out an MCP server for MissingBenefit.com, the UK benefit calculator I made the other week.
But what is an MCP server? I mean, blimey, what is *MCP*?
Well, Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard introduced by Anthropic in November 2024. It lets Large Language Models (like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini etc ) easily and securely connect to other useful applications, tools and data.
In the future, our AI Agent overlords will all speak MCP. Probably. Think of it as the lingua franca of AI.
One way government could at least try to shape an AI Agent-mediated future is to create MCP versions for its services, and add T&Cs that give it at least some leverage over how the AI agents operate on behalf of citizens.
Maybe the government could take the opportunity to join up its services more deeply, to make citizens’ lives simpler?
Think of it as a bold mission akin to the creation of GOV.UK, but this time building a single MCP server to join up actual government services, not just their start pages.
I can dream. Let me dream…
Anyway, here’s the link to the MissingBenefit.com MCP server: https://missingbenefit.com/mcp-server
Beware it’s entirely untested. Like, entirely. Here be dragons etc. But if anyone manages to play with it, please do get in touch and let me know how it goes. You’ll need to get an API key first from https://missingbenefit.com/api-keys
Tom Loosemore 
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