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MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#51

Post by karaterobot »

bitwize wrote: post #44
phh wrote: post #22

I agree with the article, and I love how the author is (mis-)using MCP. I just want to rephrase what the accident actually is. The accident isn't that somehow we got a protocol to do things we couldn't do before. As other comments point out MCP (the specificaiton), isn't anything new or interesting. No, the accident is that the AI Agent wave made interoperability hype, and vendor lock-in old-fashioned. I don't know h…

Remember Web 2.0? Remember the semantic web? Remember folksonomies? Mash-ups? The end of information silos? The democratizing power of HTTP APIs?Anyone? Anyone?

I don't understand your point. Some of those things were buzzwords, some were impossible dreams, some changed the way the web works completely. Are you just saying that the future is unknown?

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#52

Post by vinkelhake »

While reading this, the old ARexx (Amiga Rexx) popped into my head. It was a scripting language that in itself wasn't very noteworthy. However, it also made it easy for applications to expose functionality through an ARexx port. And again, offering up an API itself isn't noteworthy either. But it shipped by default in the system and if an application wanted to open itself up for scripting, ARexx was the natural choice. As a result, a ton of applications did have ARexx ports and there was a level of universality that was way ahead of its time.

Come to think of it - I don't know what the modern equivalent would be. AppleScript?

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#53

Post by apgwoz »

bitwize wrote: post #44
phh wrote: post #22

I agree with the article, and I love how the author is (mis-)using MCP. I just want to rephrase what the accident actually is. The accident isn't that somehow we got a protocol to do things we couldn't do before. As other comments point out MCP (the specificaiton), isn't anything new or interesting. No, the accident is that the AI Agent wave made interoperability hype, and vendor lock-in old-fashioned. I don't know h…

Remember Web 2.0? Remember the semantic web? Remember folksonomies? Mash-ups? The end of information silos? The democratizing power of HTTP APIs?Anyone? Anyone?

I think we found a new backronym for MCP: Mashup Context Protocol.

(The mashup hype was incredible, btw. Some of the most ridiculous web contraptions ever.)

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#54

Post by arbuge »

jampa wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound like a skeptic, but I see way more people talking about how awesome MCP is rather than people building cool things with it. Reminds me of blockchain hype. MCP seems like a more "in-between" step until the AI models get better. I imagine in 2 years, instead of using an MCP, we will point to the tool's documentation or OpenAPI, and the AI can ingest the whole context without the middle layer.

I could see that happening... perhaps instead of plugging in the URL of the MCP server you'd like to use, you'd just put in the URL of their online documentation and trust your AI assistant of choice to go through all of it.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#55

Post by Bjartr »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #25
phh wrote: post #22

I agree with the article, and I love how the author is (mis-)using MCP. I just want to rephrase what the accident actually is. The accident isn't that somehow we got a protocol to do things we couldn't do before. As other comments point out MCP (the specificaiton), isn't anything new or interesting. No, the accident is that the AI Agent wave made interoperability hype, and vendor lock-in old-fashioned. I don't know h…

> I don't know how long it'll last I'm just baffled no software vendor has already come up with a subscription to access the API via MCP. I mean obviously paid API access is nothing new, but "paid MCP access for our entreprise users" is surely on the pipeline everywhere, after which the openness will die down.

And I expect there'll eventually be a way for an AI to pay for an MCP use microtransaction style.

Heck, if AIs are at some point given enough autonomy to simply be given a task and a budget, there'll be efforts to try to trick AIs into thinking paying is the best way to get their work done! Ads (and scams) for AIs to fall for!

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#56

Post by hnlmorg »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #45

I know this is nit-picky and not really relevant to the actual meat of the story, but a toaster (outside of a gag gift or gimmick) cannot run on USB-C since your typical toaster draws ~1kW and USB-C power spec tops out at 240W.

A car lighter also cannot run a pizza oven for the same reason.

But you’re right, it does kind of miss the point.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#57

Post by iambateman »

Where do I get started with MCP? I’m all in, but kinda…confused?

A REST API makes sense to me…but this is apparently significantly different and more useful. What’s the best way to think about MCP compared to a traditional API? Where do I get started building one? Are there good examples to look at?

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#58

Post by kasey_junk »

bitwize wrote: post #44
phh wrote: post #22

I agree with the article, and I love how the author is (mis-)using MCP. I just want to rephrase what the accident actually is. The accident isn't that somehow we got a protocol to do things we couldn't do before. As other comments point out MCP (the specificaiton), isn't anything new or interesting. No, the accident is that the AI Agent wave made interoperability hype, and vendor lock-in old-fashioned. I don't know h…

Remember Web 2.0? Remember the semantic web? Remember folksonomies? Mash-ups? The end of information silos? The democratizing power of HTTP APIs?Anyone? Anyone?

Yes. Pieces of all of those things surround us now. And where we are wrt locking and interop is far beyond where we were when each of those fads happened.

Mcp is a fad, it’s not long term tech. But I’m betting shoveling data at llm agents isn’t. The benefits are too high for companies to allow vendors to lock the data away from them.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#59

Post by ebiester »

mh- wrote: post #50
sshine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hype, certainly. But the way I see it, AI agents created incentives for interoperability. Who needs an API when everyone is job secure via being a slow desktop user? Well, your new personal assistant who charges by the Watt hour NEEDS it. Like when the CEO will personally drive to get pizzas for that hackathon because that’s practically free labor, so does everyone want everything connected. For those of us who rode…

Unfortunately, I think we're equally likely to see shortsighted lock-in attempts like this [0] one from Slack. I tried to find a rebuttal to this article from Slack, but couldn't. I'm on a flight with slow wifi though. If someone from Slack wants to chime in that'd be swell, too. I've made the argument to CFOs multiple times over the years why we should continue to pay for Slack instead of just using Teams, but y'all…

It's going to take more people willing to move away from slack for those purposes.

As it is, I'm going to propose that we move more key conversations outside of slack so that we can take advantage of feeding it into ai. It's a small jump from that to looking for alternatives.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jadar wrote: post #4

I don’t want to undermine the author’s enthusiasm for the universality of the MCP. But part of me can’t help wondering: isn’t this the idea of APIs in general? Replace MCP with REST and does that really change anything in the article? Or even an Operating System API? POSIX, anyone? Programs? Unix pipes? Yes, MCP is far simpler/universal than any of those things ended up being — but maybe the solution is to build simp…

[deleted]
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