Model Context Protocol (MCP), clearly explained (why it matters)

everyone is talking about mcps it's gone

completely viral but the reality is most

people have no idea what mcps are and

what they mean and what are the startup

opportunities associated with it so in

this episode I brought Professor Ross

Mike who is probably the the best

explainer of technical Concepts in a

really easy way that someone who's

non-technical can really understand I

brought him on he explains it

beautifully in such a short amount of

time and if you stick to the end you'll

hear a couple of his startup ideas that

incorporate mcps so um enjoy the episode

and see you

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soon all right well we got Professor

Ross Mike on the Pod um and the reason

why we have him is because I don't know

what the hell mcps are and I've been

seeing it on X and I need a succinct

clear Professor Ross Mike

explanation um yes I've read a bunch of

threads on it and I've seen a couple

videos on it but there's nothing like a

Ross mic explanation so I'm here for the

what do I need to know about mcps and

that's that's what that's why you're

here thank you for coming on I I I

appreciate that thank you very much yeah

class is definitely in session I'll just

start um sharing my

screen okay so understanding

mCP um is

really um important uh but you'll also

realize the benefits and why it's sort

of a big deal but not really at the same

time you see one of the things in

programming land that we have and that

programmers love are standards and the

reason why standards are important is

they allow for us Engineers to build

systems that communicate with each other

the most popular one that you know you

might have heard of or you might not and

you don't really need to know the

details is rest rest apis and they're

basically a standard that every company

follows when they construct their apis

when they construct their services for

me as an engineer to be able to connect

with them now understanding that

engineering is all about standards and

having these formalities we follow to

make life easier when we think of in the

context of an llm I want you to

understand this one important thing llms

by themselves are incapable of doing

anything meaningful what do I mean by

that if you remember the first you know

chat gbt 3 or was it 3.5 I'm not sure

but if you just open any chat bot and

you tell it to send you an email um it

won't know how to do that it will just

tell you hey I can't send you an email

the most you can do with an llm is ask

it questions uh maybe ask it to tell you

about some historical figure whatever it

may be right um llms are truly incapable

of doing anything uh meaningful and what

I mean by meaningful it'd be nice if you

know it could send me an email um if it

could um do some specific task on my

behalf but the only thing an llm in its

current state is good at is predicting

the next text right so for example if I

say My Big Fat Greek and llm with all

the data source with all its training

material will determine that the next

word is wedding right so this is the

most an llm by itself that it could do

right the next Evolution was developers

figured out how to take llms and combine

them with tools and you can think of a

tool like an API for example um most of

us are aware where chat gbt and these

other chat Bots are able to search the

internet for example perplexity right

perplexity gives you the option to chat

with an llm but that llm has the ability

to fetch um information from the

internet and present that to you the llm

itself is not capable of doing that but

what they've done is they've constructed

a tool they've given the llm access to

an external service right and there's

plenty of these Services right I think

there's Brave search

um chat open AI offers an API now so

llms have started to become a bit more

powerful when we connected tools to them

right I can give you an example let's

say um let's say every time I get an

email I want there to be an entry in a

spreadsheet now most of you know there

are services like zapier end8 or you

know any of those Automation

Services if I build out an autom

and connect that to my llm it just

became a bit more meaningful now that's

awesome and cool but it gets really

frustrating when you want to build an

assistant that does multiple things

imagine search the internet um read your

emails summarize this you start to

become someone who glues a bunch of

different tools to these llms and it can

get very frustrating very cumbersome if

you're wondering why we don't have have

an Iron Man level Jarvis assistant is

because combining these tools making it

work with the llm is one thing but then

stacking these tools on top of each

other making it cohesive making it work

together is a nightmare itself and this

is where we're currently at and does

before I continue does this make sense

this is where we started llms by

themselves write me a poem um you know

tell me about World War I um and then

the second evolution is oh we now have

tools right we now have um these things

these external services that we can

connect to our llm the problem here is

they're difficult it's annoying and as

someone who works at an AI startup Tempo

and we have a lot of tools like for

example we do a search um you have to

find an external service you have to

connect it to the llm and you have to

make sure the llm doesn't hallucinate or

do something stupid and believe it or

not as cool as llms are by themselves

they're very very dumb um but these

tools make them just a bit more capable

so this is where we're at uh Greg we

good so far crystal clear I'm loving

this beautiful quick break in the Pod to

tell you a little bit about startup

Empire so startup Empire is my private

membership where it's a bunch of people

like me like you who want to build out

their startup ideas now they're looking

for content to help accelerate that

they're looking for potential

co-founders they're looking for uh

tutorials from people like me to come in

and tell them how do you do email

marketing how do you build an audience

how do you go viral on Twitter all these

different things that's exactly what

startup Empire is and it's for people

who want to start a startup but are

looking for ideas or it's for people who

have a startup but just they're not

seeing the traction uh that they need so

you can check out the link to Startup

empire.co in the description now enters

mCP and what does mCP mean I think the

simplest way right without getting too

technicals I've read the threads too and

as a technical person I appreciate it

but for the non- Tey I can assume it's

frustrating think of it this way think

of every tool that I have to connect to

to make my llm valuable um as a

different language so tool one's English

tool two is Spanish tool three is

Japanese right and imagine every tool

it's its own language and it's not that

there isn't a standard for how apis work

but every service provider constructs

their apis differently there's different

information you have to pass there's

just various degree of of of of things

that you have to set up that again it

just feels like gluing

a bunch of different things together

will it work yes but at scale it gets

very diff difficult mCP you can consider

it to be a layer between your llm and

the services and the tools and this

layer translates all those different

languages into a unified language that

makes complete sense to the llm right so

it's the evolution of llm plus tools but

in this Evolution it just makes it makes

it very simple for the llm to connect

and to access different outside

resources right because that's what

tools are at the end of the day so with

mCP I'm able to connect to an outside

data source an outside database maybe um

a tool like uh convex or superbase right

um imagine I I just tell the llm you

know what create me a new entry in my

database and it it's connected to my

database via mCP and it knows exactly

what to do and how to do in the second

evolution llms and tools there's a lot

of manual work that goes on there's a

lot of stepbystep planning that you have

to do and there's a lot of edge cases

where it can fail and this is why again

none of us as exciting as the space is

none of us have a Jarvis level assistant

yet it feels like we're there and we're

close but this system makes it so that

it's very diff and what's frustrating is

this imagine let me think of a simple

service a simple like you know tool

imagine um every time a slack message

comes your llm reads that slack message

and it shoots you a text right sounds

pretty trivial here's the frustrating

part imagine slack updates their API or

the text service updates makes a change

and let's say that service is connected

to other services or you have some sort

of like automation step-by-step thing

that you've

planned it becomes a nightmare it

becomes terrifying and this is why even

in the age of llms good Engineers will

still get paid because stuff like this

like this exists but what mCP does it

unifies the llm and the service right it

creates this this uh layer where the

service and the llm can communicate

efficiently now

let's get into some practicality you can

think of the mCP ecosystem as follows

you have an mCP client you have the

protocol you have an mCP server and you

have a service right an mCP client is

something like Tempo wind surf

cursor and they are basically the client

facing side the llm facing side of this

ecosystem

the protocol again is that two-way

connection between the client and the

server and the server is what translate

translates that external service its

capabilities and what it can do to the

client and that's why between the mCP

client and the mCP server there's the

mCP protocol but here's the fascinating

part and this is why I think anthropic

they're playing 3D chess when they built

this is the way this is architected the

mCP server is now in the hands of the

service provider so if let's say me and

Greg run a Dev Tool company right where

maybe we're doing a database right like

we're like listen we're going to build

the best database company in the world

and we want people's llms to have access

to this database it is now on us to

construct this mCP server so that the

client can fully access this so

anthropic in a way sort of said listen

we want our llms to be more powerful

more capable uh but it's your job to

figure this out and this is why you've

noticed all the external service

providers are now building different mCP

servers they're building out repos and

all this stuff right so this is a big

deal in a sense where llms are going to

be more capable but from a technological

perspective all they did was create a

standard a standard that it seems like

all companies and all Engineers are

going to upon because you can construct

any system any API however you please

the problem is if you want to scale you

want to grow you want other developers

other businesses to connect and work

with your service it has to be in a

fashion that makes sense for them

imagine if all of us just spoke

different languages but standards allow

us to communicate in a way that makes

sense to all of us and mCP is that for

llms because llms by themselves are not

that capable they're just they're

they're they're they're systems that

have great predictability and they know

how to predict the next word but when

you can when you add this mCP protocol

as a whole you now have a way for it to

be capable of doing important stuff now

understanding all this it's not all

sunshine and rainbows there are some

technical challenges if you notice if

anyone has set up an mCP um server on

any of their favorite mCP clients

it's annoying um there's a lot of

downloading you have to move this file

you have to copy this that and the third

um and it's a lot of local stuff there

are some Kinks that have to be figured

out uh but once this is figured out or

finalized polished or maybe they update

the standard or maybe someone comes up

with a better one we start to enter a

world where llms start to become more

capable and that is literally all what

mCP is just making llms more capable

we're trying we're doing that with tools

right now it's kind of working um but

mCP seems to be the next Evolution I

think Greg I saw your latest video um

Manis Manis is a great example of number

two they have tons of tools and kudos to

them they've engineer engineered it well

in a way where you know they well they

work well cohesively I didn't get to try

it out so I'm just looking at what

people have done but I can tell you this

it's a lot lot of engineering hours it's

a lot of one change happens something

broke someone's on call and not sleeping

but with mCP um it's structured in a way

where um if we all follow this um

standard um the llm will have access to

everything it needs um and we will all

be happy users so in short that is

literally all what mCP is it's not um

Einstein's fifth law of physics or

anything crazy like that it's literally

standard for llms and it's exciting it's

something to be excited about um and

yeah I hope I hope that clarified I just

kept ramling so I apologize for that gr

no no this is this is exactly what I

wanted I want to end on one question for

you so this is now clear to me crystal

clear to me what mcps are but my

question is well before I even ask my

question every time there's been a

popularized protocol for example https

or uh

SMTP

um examples like that there's been a lot

of big businesses that were created on

top of it and there's been basically

this like why now you know why this just

opening of opportunities yeah the

average person listening to this

podcast is building out their

ideas is this does this matter or you at

all for that person like yeah I think

that's a great question I think if I

were so I'll speak to the technical and

the non- technical to the technical

there's a lot of things that a technical

person can do here I I just don't have

time Greg but one thing I was thinking

of was like an mCP App Store and I'll

just give this idea out for free because

this this podcast is all about ideas

basically there's a lot of these repos

out there um of mCP servers and it'd be

cool if someone can go on a site I even

bought the domain um it does nothing but

again please anybody like steal this

idea um um I bought the domain and it'd

be cool if someone could um go on U like

look at the different mCP servers there

they they see the GitHub code and

whatever and they can click like install

or deploy and they that server is

deployed and gives them a specific URL

and then they can paste that in an mCP

client and work that out so for the

technical person if you make millions

all I ask is just you know send me ,000

but for the non-technical person what I

would really focus on is I would just

stay up to date with the platforms that

are building out mCP capability and just

see where the standards are going right

because like you said um when these

standards are finalized I don't know if

mCP has fully won I think it needs to be

challenged um or I don't know if

anthropic is going to make an update we

don't know it's very early but I would

say keep very close attention to what

the final standard is going to be

because once that standard is finalized

and all these service providers start to

like you know build out their mCP or

whatever thing it is you can now start

to integrate much seamlessly and much

easier right this is why again every

week There's a new chatbot interface

with new tools and it wins because this

part step number two is not easy right

especially making it cohesive and making

it work fast right like I can sit in two

hours and build something like this but

building out that user experience making

it Flawless limiting the hallucinations

it's very very hard I mean this is a lot

of the work we do at Tempo but this

makes it so that integrating is a lot

easier and you can think of these as

like Lego pieces that you can continue

to stack to stack so for my smart and

wise business owners startup uh ideas

podcast enjoyers I would really just

keep a close attention right I think

even for myself I don't think with this

mCP stuff we're at a place where any

shots can be fired that make um any

smart business decision but this is one

of those things where you just you sit

and you watch and you're just observing

and learning and when the right thing at

the right time happens you strike so I

don't see any crazy business

opportunities right now for a

non-technical person even for a

technical person like imagine if open AI

comes with a standard tomorrow and we

all just shift to that right it's very

early stages but I think understanding

how this works means you'll understand

how the next thing works and when that

becomes fin finalized you hit the ground

running amen all

right Ross Mike Professor Ross Mike

there's no one like you we'll include in

the show notes where you can follow him

for more really clear explanations

around this whole AI coding world and uh

dude I'll see you in Miami in a few

weeks yeah man I appreciate you I'm

booking my flight soon so yeah

definitely bro I'll see you soon thank

you everybody

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