Four product teams each maintain their own Claude-powered application, and all four need read access to the same internal inventory service. The platform team owns that service and must be able to change its query surface without each product team editing prompts or redeploying. Which approach best satisfies that ownership boundary?
- AHave the platform team publish an MCP server exposing the inventory service, and have each application connect to it as a client. Correct
- BWrite the inventory query rules into each application's system prompt and circulate an updated prompt whenever the platform team changes the service.
- CGive each product team a copy of a client library and let each one implement its own custom tool against the inventory service inside its own application.
- DHave the platform team export inventory snapshots on a schedule and have each application paste the current snapshot into the context window on every request.
Why A is correct: Correct because the Model Context Protocol exists to make one integration reusable across applications, and the server is versioned and operated by the team that owns the underlying service.
Why B is wrong: Tempting because a system prompt is the fastest place to add behaviour and needs no new infrastructure, but it puts the platform team's logic inside four codebases they do not own, so every change becomes four coordinated edits.
Why C is wrong: Tempting because a single custom tool really is the right unit when only one application needs an integration, but here it duplicates the same integration four times and leaves the platform team unable to change the surface centrally.
Why D is wrong: Tempting because it removes any live dependency and looks cheap to build, but it burns context on every call, serves stale data between exports, and still leaves four teams parsing the export format.