{
  "connectors": [
    {
      "id": "con_connector_vs_custom_tool",
      "name": "Connectors vs. custom tools",
      "category": "concept",
      "description": "A \"connector\" is typically a pre-built, ready-to-use integration (often maintained by Anthropic or a third party) that wraps an MCP server for a specific external product, so a user can enable it without writing any code. A \"custom tool\" is a tool an application or developer defines and registers directly (for example, in the Managed Agents API or via a hand-written MCP server) — it is not necessarily wrapped in a pre-built connector UI, and it can be scoped to exactly the actions an application wants to allow.",
      "real_or_pattern": "real",
      "source_note": "General distinction; exact governance details (e.g. permission-policy handling) vary by product and are covered on subagentpermissions.com — kept general here rather than over-specified.",
      "created_at": "2026-07-02 08:28:08",
      "cite_as": "https://subagentconnectors.com/api/connectors/con_connector_vs_custom_tool"
    },
    {
      "id": "con_general_pattern",
      "name": "Connectors are one instance of a broader MCP-server ecosystem",
      "category": "concept",
      "description": "Beyond the handful of well-known pre-built connectors, Claude can connect to any MCP server a user or organization stands up themselves — including this repo's own filesystem, Cloudflare, Postgres, and engineering-coworker MCP servers, none of which are \"pre-built connectors\" in the marketed sense but which use the identical MCP transport and tool-call mechanism.",
      "real_or_pattern": "real",
      "source_note": "General description; this repo's own crates/engineering-coworker and profiles/*.json are the concrete dogfooded example.",
      "created_at": "2026-07-02 08:28:08",
      "cite_as": "https://subagentconnectors.com/api/connectors/con_general_pattern"
    },
    {
      "id": "con_what_is_mcp",
      "name": "Model Context Protocol (MCP)",
      "category": "concept",
      "description": "MCP is an open protocol that lets an AI assistant like Claude connect to external data sources and tools through a standardized server interface, rather than each integration being bespoke. An MCP server exposes a set of tools (and sometimes resources/prompts) over a defined transport (e.g. stdio or HTTP), and any MCP-compatible client — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Claude cloud products — can connect to it using the same protocol.",
      "real_or_pattern": "real",
      "source_note": "General, well-established description of MCP; no specific version number or release date asserted.",
      "created_at": "2026-07-02 08:28:08",
      "cite_as": "https://subagentconnectors.com/api/connectors/con_what_is_mcp"
    }
  ]
}