71–80 of 366 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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…
How ironic given the amount of APIs that were locking down access in response to AI training! Though the general API lockdown was started long before that, and like you, I’m skeptical that this new wave of open access will last if the promise doesn’t live up to the hype.
In practice, the distinction is little more than the difference between different HTTP verbs, but I think there is a real difference in what people are intending to enable when creating an MCP server vs. standard APIs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main difference between MCP and Rest is that MCP is self described from the very start. REST may have OpenAPI, but it is a later addon, and we haven't quite standardised on using it. The first step of exposing an MCP is describing it, for Rest is is an optional step that's often omitted.
Is it "self-described" in the sense I can get a list of endpoints or methods, with a human- (or LLM-) readable description for each - or does it supply actual schemata that I could also use with non-AI clients? (Even if only the former, it would of course be a huge step forward, as I could have the LLM generate schemata. Also, at least, everyone is standardizing on a base protocol now, and a way to pass command names…
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.
Optionality will kill adoption, and these things are absolutely things you HAVE to be able to play with to discover the value (because it’s a new and very weird kind of tool that doesn’t work like existing tools)
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?
With a traditional API, people can build it any way they want, which means you (the client) need API docs.
With MCP, you literally restrict it to 2 things: get the list of tools, and call the tool (using the schema you got above). Thus the key insight is just about: let's add 1 more endpoint that lists the APIs you have, so that robots can find it.
Example time: - Build an MCP server (equivalent of "intro to flask 101"): https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-s... - Now you can add it to Claude Desktop/Cursor and see what it does - That's as far as i got lol
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.
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…
In my mind the only thing novel about MCP is requiring the schema is provided as part of the protocol. Like, sure it's convenient that the shape of the requests/response wrappers are all the same, that certainly helps with management using libraries that can wrap dynamic types in static types, but everyone was already doing that with APIs already we just didn't agree on what that envelope's shape should be. BUT, with…
You mean, like OpenAPI, gRPC, SOAP, and CORBA?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How ironic given the amount of APIs that were locking down access in response to AI training! Though the general API lockdown was started long before that, and like you, I’m skeptical that this new wave of open access will last if the promise doesn’t live up to the hype.
MCP is supposed to grant "agency" (whatever that means), not merely expose curated data and functionality. In practice, the distinction is little more than the difference between different HTTP verbs, but I think there is a real difference in what people are intending to enable when creating an MCP server vs. standard APIs.
To this point, GUIs; going forward, AI agents. While the intention rhymes, the meaning of these systems diverge.
It's almost poetic how we're now incentivizing interoperability simply because our digital buddies have to eat (or rather, drink) to stay awake. Who would've thought that the quest for connectivity would be driven by the humble Watt hour?
I guess when it comes down to it, even AI needs a good power-up - and hopefully, this time around, the plugins will stick. But hey, I'll believe it when my assistant doesn't crash while trying to order takeout.
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…
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…