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OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

openai.github.io

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Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#131

Post by keithwhor »

mordymoop wrote: post #123
_pdp_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree. MCP is just too complex for what it is supposed to do. I don't get what's the benefit. It is the kind of thing that has the potential to be a huge time waste because it requires custom dev tools to develop and troubleshoot. It is not even a protocol in the traditional sense - more of a convention. And of course we will implement it, like everyone else, because it is gathering momentum, but I do not bel…

It took me a minute to even understand this comment because for me the “obvious” use-case for MCP is local filesystem tasks, not web requests. Using MCP to manipulate files is my primary LLM use-case and has been ever since Anthropic released it and integrated it into Claude Desktop. I understand where you’re coming from, but I suspect that the idea here is to build something that is more “filesystem first.”

That makes sense. But if that's the case I think we should call a spade a spade and differentiate "Local-first MCP" and "Remote MCP"; because what (many, most?) companies are really trying to do is integrate with the latter.

Which is where you see this sort of feedback, where a bunch of us API engineers are like; "there's already a well-trodden path for doing all of this stuff. Can we just do that and agree that it's the standard?"

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#132

Post by soulofmischief »

atonse wrote: post #48
talles wrote: post #28

> Think of MCP like a USB-C port for AI applications. That analogy may be helpful for mom, but not for me as a software engineer.

What’s wrong with this analogy? It’s a common set of APIs/protocols that includes a way to share data, capabilities, etc. That’s pretty much exactly what USB is.

This is what we used to just call "standards", but apparently we need analogies now in order to explain standards to new developers.

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#133

Post by vykthur »

soulofmischief wrote: post #128
anonymousDan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a security nightmare.

As it currently stands, MCP is absolutely a security nightmare. Combine this with a general lack of appreciation for security culture amongst developers, and the emerging vibe coding paradigm where non-security-minded people automatically generate and fail to properly audit production-facing code, and it's a disaster waiting to happen. Feels like we've slid back into the 90s in this regard. Great time to be a securit…

I tend to agree with this.

No, MCP's have NOT Won (Yet) https://newsletter.victordibia.com/p/no-mcps-have-not-won-ye...

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#134

Post by polishdude20 »

vessenes wrote: post #30
bob1029 wrote: post #26

I am really struggling with what the value-add is with MCP. It feels like another distraction in the shell game of contemporary AI tech. > MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs. What is there to standardize? Last I checked, we are using a text-to-text transformer that operates on arbitrary, tokenized strings. Anything that seems fancier than tokens-to-tokens is an illusion…

If you're interested, I'd encourage you to implement an MCP integration and see if you change your mind. For instance, I have a little 'software team in a box' tool. v1 integrated github and three different llms manually (react + python backend). This is fine. You can call github commands via CLI on the backend, and add functionality somewhat easily, depending on the LLM's knowledge. Pain points -- if you want workfl…

So is the MCP server acting like a middleman between the llm and the application you want to control?

Like, could I give the MCP server the ability to say exec Unix code on my machine and then tell the LLM "here's the MCP server, this function can execute Unix code and get back the response".

Then I can tell the LLM, "create an application using the MCP server that will listen to a GitHub webhook and git pull when the webhook hits and have it running" then the LLM would generate the commands necessary to do that and run them through the MCP server which just executed the Unix code. And viola?

I've gotten an llm to create files and run system commands for me.

Is that the most barebones application?

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#135

Post by polishdude20 »

johnjungles wrote: post #107

If you want to try out mcp (model context protocol) with little to no setup: I built https://skeet.build/mcp where anyone can try out mcp for cursor and now OpenAI agents! We did this because of a painpoint I experienced as an engineer having to deal with crummy mcp setup, lack of support and complexity trying to stand up your own. Mostly for workflows like: * start a PR with a summary of what I just did * slack or c…

This looks super cool and I can see myself using this!

Although the name is a bit unfortunate.

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#137

Post by soulofmischief »

keithwhor wrote: post #127
soulofmischief wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a certain subset of developer spends most of their time "connecting things", and if that's the kind of developer you consider yourself, I'd be looking to either upskill or change professions as this will be the first kind of developer eliminated if we continue to see decent progress in automation.

Would disagree there — system integration probably accounts for like 90% of development work; just at different layers of abstraction. It’s evergreen work that companies are endlessly trying to eliminate or automate yet keep running headfirst into.

I would still feel zero job security in such a position, and would be looking for work which is not only intellectually and creatively rewarding, but considerably more difficult to automate. Often this means becoming product-oriented or getting into leadership positions.

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#138

Post by analyte123 »

bob1029 wrote: post #26

I am really struggling with what the value-add is with MCP. It feels like another distraction in the shell game of contemporary AI tech. > MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs. What is there to standardize? Last I checked, we are using a text-to-text transformer that operates on arbitrary, tokenized strings. Anything that seems fancier than tokens-to-tokens is an illusion…

You could say the same thing about almost any protocol, e.g. HTTP, which runs on arbitrary streams of bytes over TCP; and the headers, methods and status codes are just illusions on top of that.

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#139

Post by talles »

soulofmischief wrote: post #132
atonse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with this analogy? It’s a common set of APIs/protocols that includes a way to share data, capabilities, etc. That’s pretty much exactly what USB is.

This is what we used to just call "standards", but apparently we need analogies now in order to explain standards to new developers.

Not only that, the P for "protocol" already gives that.

Re: OpenAI adds MCP support to Agents SDK

#140

Post by analyte123 »

If you have a clean, well-documented API that can be understood in under 30 minutes by a decent software engineer, congrats: you are MCP ready. I wonder how many discussions there will be about "adding MCP support" to software without this prerequisite.
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