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The Future of MCPs

iamcharliegraham.substack.com

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Re: The Future of MCPs

#31

Post by bluedevil2k »

kaycebasques wrote: post #20

If you're sold on MCP, what was your "wow" moment? I've read the docs and tinkered a bit but it was a decidedly "meh" experience personally. It seems very similar to ChatGPT Plugins, and that was a flop. I don't really like the fuzzy nature of the architecture, where I never know what server will be invoked. And I have to manually opt-in to each server I want to use? To be unexpectedly useful, it seems like I would h…

Writing an internal MCP server to link our API layer to Augment/VSCode so that our Frontend developers can ask in plaintalk about API details. With over 1000 endpoints, it lets the devs find the endpoint, and more importantly the GQL fields, quickly. After some dogfooding we plan to open it up to our clients as well.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#32

Post by hinkley »

3np wrote: post #11

> Think of MCPs as standardized APIs—connectors between external data sources or applications and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Claude. This is incorrect. MCP is Model Context Protocol. You didn't "build an MCP", you implemented an MCP server. Lighttpd is not "an HTTP", it's an HTTP server. wget is also not "an HTTP", it's an HTTP client. Lighttpd and wget are different enough that it's useful to make…

“The map is not the territory.”

Re: The Future of MCPs

#33

Post by dkersten »

atonse wrote: post #12
guideamigo_com1 wrote: post #8

MCP might be one of the few technology pieces where more articles have been written about it than the actual use-cases being built. It is like the ERC20 era all over again.

I don't feel that way. Maybe the first examples have all been related to what software people do, but I think an MCP for a travel site would be a game changer. There are so many things I want to tell a travel site that just doesn't fit into filters, so then end up spending more time searching all kinds of permutations. These could be done with an MCP-augmented agent.

People said similar things about smart contracts, yet here we are, with them being rather niche. I do agree that once the Alexa's and Siri's are LLM powered with MCP (or similar) support, these kinds of use cases will become more valuable and I do feel it will happen, and gain widespread use eventually. I just wonder how much other software it will actually replace in reality vs how much of it is hype.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#34

Post by daxfohl »

freedomben wrote: post #3

Interesting thoughts regarding MCPs being the future App Store/Platform. I don't know that I agree but I don't necessarily disagree either. Time will certainly tell. To me, MCP feels more like an implementation detail, not something that most people would ever use directly. I would expect that the future would be some app distributed through existing channels, which bundles the MCP client into it, then uses a server-…

I'd expect "local MCP servers" will be generally installed as part of something else. Photoshop, or Outlook, or whatever could come with a local MCP server to allow chat clients to automate them. Maybe printer drivers or other hardware would do similar. I don't think there's much reason to install a cloud service MCP server to run locally; you'd just use the one provided in the cloud.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#35

Post by mwigdahl »

kaycebasques wrote: post #20

If you're sold on MCP, what was your "wow" moment? I've read the docs and tinkered a bit but it was a decidedly "meh" experience personally. It seems very similar to ChatGPT Plugins, and that was a flop. I don't really like the fuzzy nature of the architecture, where I never know what server will be invoked. And I have to manually opt-in to each server I want to use? To be unexpectedly useful, it seems like I would h…

My "wow" moment was when I wrote an internal MCP server so that Claude Code could access our test databases. It was a tiny amount of code, simple to connect up, and immediately gave Claude Code a way to directly validate queries. It's been useful in numerous scenarios since then and got me thinking about additional MCP-based tools it might be nice to have.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#36

Post by mirekrusin »

freedomben wrote: post #3

Interesting thoughts regarding MCPs being the future App Store/Platform. I don't know that I agree but I don't necessarily disagree either. Time will certainly tell. To me, MCP feels more like an implementation detail, not something that most people would ever use directly. I would expect that the future would be some app distributed through existing channels, which bundles the MCP client into it, then uses a server-…

More like npm, not app store.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#37

Post by pbronez »

nilslice wrote: post #17

we’ve been building most of what OP has written about with https://mcp.run We started doing this the day Anthropic released MCP in November last year. Our company has always been devoted to secure plug-in system technology having built Extism, a WebAssembly plugin framework. We immediately saw MCP as the plugin system for AI and knew it would be significant, but were concerned about the security implications of runni…

Cool platform. I got some errors while exploring your website. Searching for tools to use works on mobile but not on desktop for some reason.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#38

Post by leo-notte »

atonse wrote: post #22
esafak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no saying that they will expose more functionality through the MCP API than their web site. I imagine the API will be more limited.

No, but let me be more specific. For example, when I search for flights, there might be situational things (like, "can you please find me a flight that has at least a 2 hour layover at airport because last time i had a hard time finding the new terminal" etc. Or an agent that will actually even READ that information from the airport website to see notices like "expect long delays in the next 3 months as we renovate T…

that kind of synthesis is where current search interfaces fall short. the pieces exist in isolation like flight data, personal calendars, and airport notices, but nothing ties them together in a way that's actually useful. an agent using MCP could help connect those dots if the APIs are deep enough and the UX avoids feeling like a black box. the real challenge might not be the tech but getting providers to share enough useful data and trust whatever sits between them and the user.

Re: The Future of MCPs

#39

Post by grahac »

kaycebasques wrote: post #20

If you're sold on MCP, what was your "wow" moment? I've read the docs and tinkered a bit but it was a decidedly "meh" experience personally. It seems very similar to ChatGPT Plugins, and that was a flop. I don't really like the fuzzy nature of the architecture, where I never know what server will be invoked. And I have to manually opt-in to each server I want to use? To be unexpectedly useful, it seems like I would h…

Yep. It is currently a Meh experience as said in the OP because the UX sucks. The idea is take a step back and imagine what could it become if those are fixed.

Btw, one of my favorite MCPs is a Whois MCP so I can ask Claude Desktop to brainstorm domain names and then immediately check if they are available :).

It’s clunky but I am still using it :)

Re: The Future of MCPs

#40

Post by happyopossum »

3np wrote: post #11

> Think of MCPs as standardized APIs—connectors between external data sources or applications and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Claude. This is incorrect. MCP is Model Context Protocol. You didn't "build an MCP", you implemented an MCP server. Lighttpd is not "an HTTP", it's an HTTP server. wget is also not "an HTTP", it's an HTTP client. Lighttpd and wget are different enough that it's useful to make…

> You didn't "build an MCP"

The author explicitly states he built 2 MCP servers, not 2 MCPs, so I don’t know where your beef is coming from

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