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Model Context Protocol (MCP)

An open standard that lets AI assistants call external tools and live data sources, so answers are computed rather than guessed.

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What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude call external tools and data sources. An MCP server advertises a set of typed tools — for example, options analytics like IV rank, dealer gamma exposure or expected moves — and the assistant decides when to call them, then reasons over the live results instead of guessing from training data. For traders, the practical effect is that questions like "is this straddle overpriced?" get answered from data fetched at ask-time. ApexVol ships an MCP server (apexvol-mcp on PyPI) exposing 43 options-analytics tools; see the setup guide at /learn/claude-options-data-mcp and the overview at /mcp.

Complete definition

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude call external tools and data sources. An MCP server advertises a set of typed tools — for example, options analytics like IV rank, dealer gamma exposure or expected moves — and the assistant decides when to call them, then reasons over the live results instead of guessing from training data. For traders, the practical effect is that questions like "is this straddle overpriced?" get answered from data fetched at ask-time. ApexVol ships an MCP server (apexvol-mcp on PyPI) exposing 43 options-analytics tools; see the setup guide at /learn/claude-options-data-mcp and the overview at /mcp.

ApexVol Terminal

Options analytics, live.

Chains, IV rank, expected move and dealer positioning for 5,500+ US stocks and ETFs.

  • Live chains and Greeks
  • IV rank and percentile
  • Expected move and GEX
  • Screener and strategy P&L
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By Ryan Silk & Lawrence Polatchek Last reviewed . Methodology is published in full.

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