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WebMCP is available for early preview

developer.chrome.com

31–40 of 226 posts

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#31
I actually think webmcp is incredibly smart & good (giving users agency over what's happening on the page is a giant leap forward for users vs exposing APIs).

But this post frustrates the hell out of me. There's no code! An incredibly brief barely technical run-down of declarative vs imperative is the bulk of the "technical" content. No follow up links even!

I find this developer.chrome.com post to be broadly insulting. It has no on-ramps for developers.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#32

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

It’s weirder than that. There is a surge of companies working on how to provide automated access to things like payments, email, signup flows, etc to *Claw.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#33
post #28

Hey, it's the semantic web, but with ~~XML~~, ~~AJAX~~, ~~Blockchain~~, Ai! Well, it has precisely the problem of the semantic web, it asks the website to declare in a machine readable format what the website does. Now, llms are kinda the tool to interface to everybody using a somewhat different standard, and this doesn't need everybody to hop on the bandwagon, so perhaps this is the time where it is different.

Are AI smart enough to automatically generate semantics now? Vibe semantics? Or would they be Slop semantics?

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#34

Majority of sites don't even expose accessibility functionalities, and for WebMCP you have to expose and maintain internal APIs per page. This opens the site up to abuse/scraping/etc. Thats why I dont see this standard going to takeoff. Google put it out there to see uptake. Its really fun to talk about but will be forgotten by end of year is my hot take. Rather what I think will be the future is that each website wi…

This isn’t even MCP, it’s just tools. If it were real MCP of definitely have fun using the “sampling” feature of MCP with people who visit my site…

IYKYK

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#35

Majority of sites don't even expose accessibility functionalities, and for WebMCP you have to expose and maintain internal APIs per page. This opens the site up to abuse/scraping/etc. Thats why I dont see this standard going to takeoff. Google put it out there to see uptake. Its really fun to talk about but will be forgotten by end of year is my hot take. Rather what I think will be the future is that each website wi…

> for WebMCP you have to expose and maintain internal APIs per page

Perhaps. I think an API for the session is probably the root concern. Page specific is nice to have.

You say it like it's a bad thing. But ideally this also brings clarity & purpose to your own API design too! Ideally there is conjunct purpose! And perhaps shared mechanism!

> This opens the site up to abuse/scraping/etc.

In general it bothers me that this is regarded as a problem at all. In principle, sites that try to clickjack & prevent people from downloading images or whatever have been with us for decades. Trying to keep users from seeing what data they want is, generally, not something I favor.

I'd like to see some positive reward cycles begin, where sites let users do more, enable them to get what they want more quickly, in ways that work better for them.

The web is so unique in that users often can reject being corralled and cajoled. That they have some choice. A lot of businesses being the old app-centric "we determine the user experience" ego to the web when they work, but, imo, there's such a symbiosis to be won by both parties by actually enhancing user agency, rather than this war against your most engaged users.

This also could be a great way to avoid scraping and abuse, by offering a better system of access so people don't feel like they need to scrape your site to get what they want.

> Rather what I think will be the future is that each website will have its own web agent to conversationally get tasks done on the site without you having to figure out how the site works

For someone who just was talking about abuse, this seems like a surprising idea. Your site running its own agent is going to take a lot of resources!! Insuring those resources go to what is mutually beneficial to you both seems... difficult.

It also, imo, misses the idea of what MCP is. MCP is a tool calling system, and usually, it's not just one tool involved! If an agent is using webmcp to send contacts from one MCP system into a party planning webmcp, that whole flow is interesting and compelling because the agent can orchestrate across multiple systems.

Trying to build your own agent is, broadly, imo, a terrible idea, that will never allow the user to wield the connected agency they would want to be bringing. What's so exciting an interesting about the agent age is that the walls and borders of software are crumbling down, and software is intertwingularizing, is soft & malleable again. You need to meet users & agents where they are at, if you want to participate in this new age of software.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#36

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

I'm old enough to remember discussions around the meaning of `User-Agent` and why it was important that we include it in HTTP headers. Back before it was locked to `Chromium (Gecko; Mozilla 4.0/NetScape; 147.01 ...)`. We talked about a magical future where your PDA, car, or autonomous toaster could be browsing the web on your behalf, and consuming (or not consuming) the delivered HTML as necessary. Back when we named it "user agent" on purpose. AI tooling can finally realize this for the Web, but it's a shame that so many companies who built their empires on the shoulders of those visionaries think the only valid way to browse is with a human-eyeball-to-server chain of trust.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#37

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

And what site is going to open their api up to everyone? Document endpoints already exist, why make it more complicated.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#38

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

I'm old enough to remember discussions around the meaning of `User-Agent` and why it was important that we include it in HTTP headers. Back before it was locked to `Chromium (Gecko; Mozilla 4.0/NetScape; 147.01 ...)`. We talked about a magical future where your PDA, car, or autonomous toaster could be browsing the web on your behalf, and consuming (or not consuming) the delivered HTML as necessary. Back when we named…

Me too but it died when ads became the currency of the web. If the reason the site exists is to use ads, they’re not going to let you use an user agent that doesn’t display the ads.

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#39

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

They wanna let you use the service the way they want. An e-commerce? Wanna automate buying your stuff - probably something they wanna allow under controlled forms Wanna scrape the site to compare prices? Maybe less so.

A brave new world for fraud and returns.

Also I just recently noticed Chrome now has a Klarna/BNPL thing as a built in payments option that I never asked for...

Re: WebMCP is available for early preview

#40

Can someone explain what the hell is going on here? Do websites want to prevent automated tooling, as indicated by everyone putting everything behind Cloudfare and CAPTCHAs since forever, or do websites want you to be able to automate things? Because I don't see how you can have both. If I'm using Selenium it's a problem, but if I'm using Claude it's fine??

Oh, that's an easy one. LLMs have made people lose their god damned minds. It makes sense when you think about it as breaking a few eggs to get to the promised land omelette of laying off the development staff.
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