"Want your AI agents to respond like peons from Warcraft 3 when you assign them a task?" -- I'd rather be sailing.
MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
191–200 of 366 posts
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but we would have had them even if MCP did not exist. The need to access those APIs via LLM-based "agents" would have existed without MCP. At work I built an LLM-based system that invoke tools. We started before MCP existed, and just used APIs (and continue to do so). Its engineering value is nil, it only has marketing value (at best).
As https://www.stainless.com/blog/mcp-is-eating-the-world--and-... recaps, tool calling existed before MCP, some vague standards existed, nothing took off, no really normal users don't want to just download the OpenAPI spec. Anthropic wants to define another standard now btw https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/desktop-extensions
Normal users don't know what MCP is and will never use an MCP server (knowingly or unknowingly) in their life. They use ChatGPT through the web UI or the mobile app, that's it.
MCP is for technical users.
(Maybe read the link you sent, it has nothing to do with defining a new standard)
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#193Universal but insecure
Easy, just add an S to the end (for secure).
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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!
> 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!
We're already there, just take a look at the people spending $500 a day on Claude Code.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
HATEOAS was supposed to be that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS
Wait was it? HATEOAS is all about hypermedia, which means there must be a human in the loop being presented the rendered hypermedia. MCP seems like it's meant to be for machine machine communication, not human machine
Hypermedia isn't just for human consumption. Back in the 90s, the Web was going to be crawled by "User Agents": software performing tasks on behalf of people (say, finding good deals on certain items; or whatever). Web browsers (human-driven interfaces) were the most common User Agent, but ended up being a lowest-common-denominator; the only other User Agents to get any widespread support were Google crawlers.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
what is IFTTT ?
If this then that - a zapier type glue provider.
Minor chronological point but Zapier is an IFTTT-type glue provider.
IFTTT was announced Dec. 14, 2010 and launched on Sept. 7. 2011.
Zapier was first pitched Sept. 30, 2011 and their public beta launched May 2012.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#197This 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?
I cannot really answer, but it seems you can just wrap mcp in a rest wrapper, as thqt is how open web ui seems to integrate mcp into its tooling..
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#198The real accident is that the prompts became a programming language. I don't think the ML Engineers set out to create a general purpose programming language. A2A (agent 2 agent) mechanism is an another accidental discovery for the interoperability across agent boundaries
"The hottest new programming language is English" - Karpathy
I call bullshit, mainly because any natural language is ambiguous at best, and incomplete at worst.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#199Where 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 not a recipe, but I found this sufficiently interesting, at least for grasping the conceptual differences.
Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System
#200> What if you just... removed the AI part?
Maybe I'm not fully understanding the approach, but it seems like if you started relying on third-party MCP servers without the AI layer in the middle, you'd quickly run into backcompat issues. Since MCP servers assume they're being called by an AI, they have the right to make breaking changes to the tools, input schemas, and output formats without notice.