As AI agents move from demos to production, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) has become the default way to give them tools. But the operational layer around MCP is still immature, and two gaps show up fast.
The reliability gap
MCP servers disconnect mid-session — a crashed subprocess, a dropped network stream — and the agent has no good signal. It sees a generic "No such tool available" error, indistinguishable from a tool that never existed. Worse, it can't reconnect itself; a human has to intervene. In a long autonomous run, capabilities silently vanish and the agent fails in confusing ways.
The security gap
MCP tools are described in natural language that the model reads and acts on. That creates two live threats:
