As GenAI continues to shape the future of software development, one powerful concept is making waves in the QA world: Model Context Protocol (MCP) . While it may sound technical at first, MCP is essentially the protocol that allows AI to maintain context and interact with external tools like JIRA, Slack, or Playwright during multi-step tasks. For testers, this means building intelligent assistants that can act like real QA team members. In this blog, we'll break down what MCP is, how it works, and how it can be used in software testing — with examples, advantages, and a few challenges to watch out for. What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)? Think of MCP as the orchestrator behind intelligent conversations between a GenAI model and external systems. It's a structured way to maintain: Who said what (User vs AI) What AI is supposed to do (System instructions) Which tools can it use (Tool calls) What results were received (Tool responses)...
Over the past year, Prompt Engineering has been the darling of the GenAI world. Tweak your prompt, get a better answer. Add more detail, get more context. Sounds great, right? If you’ve ever tried building AI agents that go beyond answering one-off questions — like automating test scenarios, helping with workflows, or making decisions across tools — you’ve probably hit a wall. And that’s where Context Engineering comes in. It’s not just the next trend — it's the foundation of truly intelligent AI agents . Prompt Engineering: Great for Questions, Not for Thinking Let’s start with what prompt engineering is good at. You give an LLM a prompt like: “Generate test cases for the login functionality with username, password, and forgot password link.” And it delivers. Job done — right? But what happens when your application has: Dynamic changes in functionality Reuse of components across modules Test dependencies that evolve over sprints Or user preferences like tes...