Universal but insecure
MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
61–70 of 366 posts
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#62I 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…
MCP is not REST. In your comparison, its more that MCP is a protocol for discovering REST endpoints at runtime and letting users configure what REST endpoints should be used at runtime. Say i'm building a app and I want my users to be able to play spotify songs. Yea, i'll hit the spotify api. But now, say i've launched my app, and I want my users to be able to play a song from sonofm when they hit play. Alright, now…
HATEOAS was supposed to be that.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#63This isn't a snide comment, I am legitimately asking. I don't understand the difference between MCP and REST. I know there are differences because I've used it a little. I mean, like, on an existential level. Why isn't it just REST? What parts do MCP give us that REST doesn't?
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#64Where 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?
It's kinda like a REST API in which the schema tags along with the requests.
The use case in AI is sort of reversed such that the code runs on your computer
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#65While 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 choic…
PowerShell with COM interfaces.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#66I 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.
It's very different to blockchain hype
I had similar skepticism initially, but I would recommend you dip toe in water on it before making judgement
The conversational/voice AI tech now dropping + the current LLMs + MCP/tools/functions to mix in vendor APIs and private data/services etc. really feels like a new frontier
It's not 100% but it's close enough for a lot of usecases now and going to change a lot of ways we build apps going forward
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#67So much scepticism in the comments. I spent last week implementing an MCP server and I must say that "well-designed" is probably an overstatement. One of the principles behind MCP is that "an MCP server should be very easy to implement". I don't know, maybe it's a skill issue but it's not that easy at all. But what is important imo, is that so many eyes are looking in one direction right now. That means, it has good chances to have all the problems to be solved very quickly. And second, often it's so hard to gather a critical mass of attention around something to create an ecosystem but this is happening right now. I wish all the participants patience and luck)
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#68I 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?
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Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#69I 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?
Nobody remembers the semantic web anymore
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#70... MCP is almost literally just a JSON schema and a "yo, this stuff exists" for AI. It is great to have it standardised and we're all very thankful not to be using XML but there just isn't that much there. MCP is fulfilling the promise of AI agents being able to do their own thing. None of this is unintended, unforeseen or particularly dependent on the existence of MCP. It is exciting, the fact that AI has this capa…
XML actually works better with LLMs than JSON.