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MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

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Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#331

Post by diggan »

dgacmu wrote: post #98
mh- wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm happier we went with Zulip each day.

(Still) such an overvalued alternative to all these "ephemeral but permanent" chat apps. For folks who like a bit more structure and organization, but still want "live communication" like what Slack et al offers, do yourself a favor and look into Zulip.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#332

Post by diggan »

troupo wrote: post #302
gillesjacobs wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't do it magically. The "tools" an LLM agent calls to create responses are typically REST APIs for these services. Previously, many companies gated these APIs but with the MCP AI hype they are incentivized to expose what you can achieve with APIs through an agent service. Incentives align here: user wants automations on data and actions on a service they are already using, company wants AI marketing, USP in a…

> Previously, many companies gated these APIs but with the MCP AI hype they are incentivized to expose what you can achieve with APIs through an agent service. Why would they be incentivized to do that if they survived all the previous hype waves and still have access gated? > user wants automations on data and actions on a service they are already using, How many users want that? Why didn't companies do all this bef…

> Why would they be incentivized to do that if they survived all the previous hype waves and still have access gated?

Because they suddenly now don't want to be left out of the whole AI hype/wave.

Is it stupid? Yes. Can we still reap the benefits of these choices driven by stupid motivations? Also yes.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#333

Post by diggan »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #284
Mtinie wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Minor point but arguably both are Yahoo Pipes-type glue provider, which itself is basic no-code glue thing. The difference is that IFTTT erred on the side of dumbing the product down too much, and Zapier erred on the side of being too much B2B-focused - so they both missed the mark on becoming the universal glue.

Then of course we have Node-Red too, which probably is too developer focused (and generally just lacking any sort of focus at the same time, strangely), so also doesn't sit somewhere closer to the middle.

Do we really not having anything coming close to the usefulness of Yahoo Pipes yet? What would a modern alternative look like and how would it work? Someone has to thinking about this.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#334

Post by causal »

gavinray wrote: post #139
Jonovono wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

MCP is a JSON RPC implementation of OpenAPI, or, get this, XML and WSDL/SOAP.

WSDL triggered me ha. I'm afraid you're right

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#335

Post by dgrabla »

If MCP gets used this way I see big trouble when people hardcode stuff and then the provider updates the endpoints. MCP does not have versions as the list-tools is a living document, you are supposed to fetch and read the current version. AI would be totally fine with it because it would be able to reason the change and adapt, but the hardcoded app is going to break badly.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#336

Post by Jonovono »

Too wrote: post #258
Jonovono wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That only works if you let the LLM do the interpretation of the MCP descriptions, in the case of TFA the idea was to use MCP without LLM, which is essentially same as any old API.

You can use MCP to dynamically call different services, without ever having to use an LLM to decide.

With an LLM it would go

List MCP Tools -> Get User prompt -> Feed both into LLM -> LLM tells you what tools to call

You could skip the LLM aspect completely and get all tools and let the user at runtime pick the tool that "playsSong" for example

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#337

Post by cpard »

I wonder how this interoperability hype in the industry, induced by MCPs, will affect companies where the lack of interoperability is almost a moat.

I remember when I first interacted with Marketo and I was wondering why people even bother trying to use this tool just to learn that Marketo has the best integration with Salesforce and thus, it’s almost a certainty that as you scale you’ll get to use it.

Salesforce in particular, relies a lot on the vendor ecosystem built on a platform that is so painful to inter operate with.

I’m very curious to see what effect this will have to them.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#338

Post by thegreatwhale8 »

Offtopic: The article reads very much like it's chatgpt generated. But it's not surprising giving the subject matter. I just dislike how a computer tries to be entertaining and uses this default "voice" when writing anything. I hope there will be some way to personalize the output text, so it will be correct, but not soulless.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#339

Post by ls-a »

thegreatwhale8 wrote: post #338

Offtopic: The article reads very much like it's chatgpt generated. But it's not surprising giving the subject matter. I just dislike how a computer tries to be entertaining and uses this default "voice" when writing anything. I hope there will be some way to personalize the output text, so it will be correct, but not soulless.

I like how all the jokes/memes about what customers ask for vs. what developers produce, now apply to what developers ask for vs. what AI produces.

Re: MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System

#340

Post by ajuc »

tra3 wrote: post #319
kimjune01 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are interested in scraping slack for personal use, I made a local-only slack scraper mcp: https://github.com/kimjune01/slunk-mcp

Thanks for building this, but also ridiculous that you had to do it. I miss irc even though slack is objectively better.

Jabber & XMPP was the peak of instant messaging. Since then it's been downhill.
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