MCP Banking Intelligence Layer (Lab 1 + Lab 2)

This project turns a pile of financial documents into AI-generated investment briefs. It is built in two stages:

• Lab 1 — RAG + Multi-Agent (AutoGen): a ResearchAgent writes a brief from data retrieved out of a ChromaDB vector store, and a CriticAgent reviews it until it meets a quality checklist.
• Lab 2 — MCP Banking Intelligence Layer: we take Lab 1’s tangled retrieval logic and expose it as a clean MCP server of reusable “banking tools.” A LangChain + Ollama agent then acts as the MCP client, discovering and calling those tools at runtime to build the brief — and reuses the Lab 1 CriticAgent for the final review.

Lab 2 reuses the Lab 1 data (chroma_db/). You do not re-run ingest.py.

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1. What is MCP, and why does it matter?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard from Anthropic that defines how an AI application talks to external tools and data. Think of it as a universal adapter — like USB-C for AI tools.

Without MCP, every agent hardcodes its own data access. In Lab 1, the agent reaches directly into ChromaDB. If a new team wants a loan advisor or a fraud analyst, they must copy and modify the whole codebase.

With MCP, the data/tool logic lives behind a standard server interface:

Why this is powerful: the agent code never names a database. Tomorrow you can swap ChromaDB for a live Bloomberg feed by editing only server.py — the agent in client.py does not change. Tools become modular and shareable across any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, your own agent, etc.).

Key idea: who thinks vs. who fetches

• The server tools are “dumb” on purpose. They only retrieve and process data and return JSON. They never call an LLM.
• The client agent does the thinking. The LLM looks at the available tools, decides which to call (this is not hardcoded), reads the JSON results, and writes the brief.

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2. Architecture

Lab 1 pipeline (RAG + AutoGen)

data/financial/*.txt
        │  ingest.py (run ONCE)
        ▼
   ┌──────────────┐     retriever.py        ┌──────────────┐   APPROVED?   ┌──────────┐
   │  ChromaDB    │ ───────────────────────►│ ResearchAgent│ ◄───────────► │ Critic   │
   │ financial_docs│   (semantic retrieval)  │  (drafts)    │   feedback    │ Agent    │
   └──────────────┘                          └──────────────┘               └──────────┘