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MCP Explained

156 points • by rwilinski • today at 2:08 PM • 80 comments • view on HN

Comments

nater5000 • today at 2:30 PM

This is too dense. You might as well just post some Python code with sufficient comments to get the same point across. I think a nicely written article with a few diagrams would go a long way. Sometimes less is more.

MCPs don't really need this level of technical explanations (it's basically just a REST API with standardized endpoints for discovery aimed at agents), and AI agents really do lack in the taste dimension when it comes to these things.

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hammadtariq • today at 5:56 PM

The site is beautifully made and I see a point but as many of others are also noticing, picking a beginner up, taking maybe 10 steps with him to introduce all of the concepts and terminology could be better for everyone to understand.

Zaheer • today at 5:55 PM

These vibe code explainers look nice on the surface but actually make things even more confusing. There's an element of curating which information to present and when that doesn't come across here.

ndriscoll • today at 2:47 PM

Are MCP calls composable in e.g. codex yet? e.g. can a model pipe a jira MCP call to grep or sed, or at least into a file? Last I looked at MCP it was just a vastly worse version of curl, .netrc, and some short text files describing calls (which are themselves greppable). Is there anything useful beyond that that I'm missing?

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sputknick • today at 2:17 PM

I couldn't find a github link, if anyone knows where to find the code for this, I'd like to modify it to make it a primer more friendly to non-technical managers.

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1ba9115454 • today at 3:25 PM

The best thing about MCP is its almost impossible to use for most people except developers. Therefore ensuring our existence.

Don't believe me? Try connecting Blender to Codex.

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padolsey • today at 3:47 PM

MCP is that kind of thing a manager comes up to you with and says "ARE WE USING MCP? it's the latest thing" and you roll your eyes, hunch over, stare at your screen and say to yourself "no, we're using strings, just strings." as you watch them drift to their next prey, you see scrawled up in their hands a note with crossed out acronyms. NFT. Web3. AMP. SOAP. IoT.

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shaolinspirit • today at 2:42 PM

mcp's are barely needed, good cli's are usually better

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flr03 • today at 4:39 PM

It's almost 2027 and I still dont understand if we actually need MCP. I must admit I am not really surfing the AI wave. But looks like a nothing burger.

cityofdelusion • today at 4:29 PM

Too dense. I’m not sure how this was outlined to the LLM but please first educate yourself on the basic principles of teaching, learning, and education. The AI that made this went off the rails and it is borderline incomprehensible.

flyingsky • today at 2:21 PM

I've been thinking alot about developer education and while I think this format is fun to fiddle with, I feel this(and a lot of technical learning resources) are no longer as valuable as they would have been in a world without LLMS. Now if I wanna learn something I ask claude and I can essentially build my knowledge incrementally, have it build animations iteratively, ask questions and essentially derive an understanding.

ddellacosta • today at 2:32 PM

This is noisy slop that doesn't explain anything. Maybe try starting with a definition and a single diagram?

I swear when I see stuff like this is makes me depressed about the future of our industry. Pick up an Edward Tufte book or something and use your brain

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vatsachak • today at 3:51 PM

Horribly designed

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jimbokun • today at 2:45 PM

My take away from this overview is that MCP is just a synonym for JSON RPC.

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bibelo • today at 2:39 PM

AI slop sorry

enjoyyourlife • today at 3:49 PM

For me it's just:

from mcp.server.fastmcp import FastMCP

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not-tarnished • today at 4:37 PM

AI Slop

manu69x • today at 4:42 PM

[flagged]

Mantis99 • today at 4:19 PM

[flagged]

BurakSakmak • today at 3:57 PM

[dead]

amelius • today at 4:25 PM

Do you really need to know how this plumbing works? I'd just tell the AI how to use a tool, and to write the MCP spec if it is really ever needed.