you need to learn MCP RIGHT NOW!! (Model Context Protocol)

You need to learn MCP right now. MCP

makes AI do things overpowered things.

Like when I connected Claude to my

Obsidian vault. What? Or Brave or Kali

Linux? My jaw dropped. I mean, look at

this. Claude is hacking with Kali Linux

right now. So, in this video, I'm going

to show you the magic of the model

context protocol. I'll break down what

it is, show you how to use it with

Docker containers. It's all local, and

even how to build your very own custom

MCP servers for literally anything you

can think of. My goal by the end of this

video is to create a Kali Linux MCP

server so our LLMs can hack for us.

Doesn't that sound awesome? Get your

coffee ready. Let's go.

And shout out to Docker for making this

video possible. So, giving LLM access to

our tools makes them insanely powerful

and it's necessary if we want them to do

anything productive. But to do this is

kind of hard. And I hate to say this,

but you have to think about LM like

people to a point. Now, for us humans,

when we want to use tools like a task

manager or an email manager, we're not

going to be interacting with the code,

right? No, no one would use it. That's

why we have user interfaces or guies.

This nice, friendly interface abstracts

away the complicated code, making it

easier and possible for most humans to

use it. Solution found. Let's just give

the LLM a guey. They'll love it. No,

they won't. They hate gooies. At least

for now. LLMs, they love text. So giving

them a gooey, it's like they can do it.

It's hard. It takes forever. Okay, fine.

Just give them the code. LLMs love code,

right? Not going to work. They need

access to that code and your apps are

not going to give it. But hold up. What

about APIs? That would be perfect,

right? Application programming

interfaces were built so that one

program could use the tools of another

program. You can't give a program a

guey, but you can expose API endpoints

that allow a program to programmatically

use these tools in a language it

understands. So, for example, my real

task manager, ClickUp, they expose an

API endpoint that allows a program to

create a task for you. And when I

pretend to be a program, watch what

happens. Boom. Task comes in. Or I can

use the Obsidian REST API, pretend to be

a computer, and create a new note. How

cool is that? So, what's the point of

this video? Problem solved. Give the LLM

API access. Hold on. Let's say we did.

First of all, this API stuff, that's

code. in order to interact with the API

endpoints. That's going to be running

some sort of code, which the LLMs often

don't have access to. And even if they

did, look at this API documentation. I

mean, look at ClickUps. It's super

intense. You'd have to code each one of

those API interactions and instruct the

LLM on how to do it. Now, don't get me

wrong, people do this and it works, but

it's kind of a pain, right? And there's

no standard way to do it. There's got to

be an easier way, right? Check the title

of the video. MCP came in to save the

day. MCP is the model context protocol,

a standardized way to give tools to LLM.

It's kind of like how USBC solved our

cable issues. Created by Anthropic, it

did not take long for this to become the

industry standard. And here's why. Check

this out. So, instead of the LLM having

to run code to interact with the APIs,

we'll throw in what's called an MCP

server. This server is abstracting away

all the complexity of these API calls.

Now, what does that mean? It means all

the code that you would normally have to

write to interact with the API, the MCP

server is handling that. It has that

written into its code. It'll do all that

for you or for the LLM. So, all we have

to do is say, "Hey LLM, connect to this

MCP server." Slot right in. We'll say,

"Hey, Mr. AI, when you want to create a

task or get a task, you don't have to

code anything. Just simply ask the MCP

server to do it." The MCP server will

have these tasks or tools exposed like

create a task and all the LLM has to do

is simply ask and use that task. It

doesn't have to know anything about API

endpoints, anything about the code,

authentication, none of that. The MCP

server abstracts all that complexity and

makes it kind of stupid simple for our

AI. We essentially created a guey for

our LLM. They just have to click a

button. And the most exciting part about

this is that this MCP thing is now the

standard. So if your AI, if your LLM has

the ability to connect to an MCP server,

which most do now, everyone's adopting

it. Then you can connect to a ton of

applications because everyone's exposing

their APIs via an MCP server. Enough

talking about it. Let's have you try an

MCP server right now. Quick sip of

coffee.

Let's get you connected to one. I just

heated up my coffee. It's super hot.

Now, I've got good news. It's actually

crazy easy to run your own MCP server

right now locally on your computer. Let

me show you. It's going to be using

Docker. Shocker. That rhymed. And you

can do this on pretty much any machine

you want. Mac, Linux, Windows. The one

requirement is that you're running

Docker Desktop. Actually, let me do a

whole what you need thing real quick.

I'm not sure why I did jazz hands there.

That felt very weird. I can't imagine

how it felt for you. So, Docker Desktop

and you'll also need an LLM app,

something that can run large language

models and something that can use MCP

servers. I'm going to demonstrate three

options. I'll show you cloud desktop, my

personal favorite. It's free. This will

be using the cloud models, which are

fantastic. I'll show you LM Studio for

local models like Llama. And for all you

people who love, I'll show you Cursor.

Let's get started with our Docker

desktop install. It's really easy. I've

got a fresh Mac here. I'm going to go

out to docs.docker.com.

docker.com/destop

and that's it. I'll have all the links

below in a guide. For me, I'll do Docker

Desktop on Apple Silicon. I'm not going

to walk through Windows or Linux

installs, but they'll all be below. Keep

in mind, Windows does involve the extra

step of getting WSL 2 or HyperV set up

as a backend. We're not going to cover

that here, but there are docs in the

description below. All right, I'll go

ahead and install Docker Desktop and

then launch it. We'll sign our life away

by accepting all terms. Use recommended

settings. And now here, you can create a

Docker login if you want. You don't have

to, but I recommend it. It's free. No

pressure. Now, Docker Desktop is great

at running Docker containers. You

probably saw that coming, but maybe what

you didn't see coming is they're great

at running MCP servers with their MCP

toolkit. This is brand new, hot off the

presses. And when I first heard about

it, I didn't care so much. Honestly, I'm

like, so what? Then I tried it. And now

I use it every single stinking day. It's

amazing. Now, to get this working, we

have to turn on a few things. The main

thing is the MCP toolkit. We'll click on

that real quick. Actually, is it already

installed and set up? Let's go make

sure. Let's go to our settings. We'll go

to beta features. Okay, I already had

Docker MCP toolkit enabled. Go check

there right now to make sure you don't

already have it enabled. And that's um

all we had to do. Now, let's pick an MCP

server to run. They have a whole

catalog. Look at all this. Now, these

are official MCP servers that are part

of their catalog. As I mentioned, we can

make our own. I'll show you that here in

a moment. But let's search for one that

will be really fun right now. Obsidian.

So, yes, there is an Obsidian MCP

server. I'll just add the sucker. And

all I have to do is paste in my Obsidian

API key, which I can get from Obsidian

here. Now, Obsidian is a local open-

source notes application, my favorite. I

use it every day. And they have a

community plugin called local REST API

that I installed. We already used it

earlier. I'm going to grab this API key

that it provides and paste it into this

field here.

And that's it. Getting back to my

servers tab here. You can see I have an

Obsidian server, 12 tools available. If

I jump in there, I can see what the

tools are. Click on tools and you can

see that it's describing these tools in

plain language. Use Obsidian append

content to append content to a new or

existing file in the vault. Behind the

scenes, it's doing all these API calls

to the Obsidian REST API. But for you,

me, and the LLM, we just know we say,

"Hey, get some changes. Hey, do a simple

search." And it does it for you. You

ready to see it happen? Now, you're

about to see some slide of hand here.

Really just some magic behind the

scenes. Something absolutely crazy is

happening. Something called the Docker

MCP gateway. Okay, I'm not going to show

you that just yet. We'll cover more on

that later, but just know it's doing

some extra magic behind the scenes. Now,

notice under MCP toolkit, we have the

option for servers, the catalog, and

then we have clients. These are the LLMs

that can interact with the Docker MCP

servers. Look at that. Cloud desktop is

right here. What do you say we connect?

And that was it. I just did it. So, I

have Cloud running right now. This is a

free account. I don't pay for anything.

I'm going to restart it. Launch it

again. And by the way, ignore this. We

won't need this right now with our own

custom tools. Now, I'm going to click on

this setting box right here. And you're

gonna see something amazing. MCP Docker.

That's us. That's what we just did. If I

click on that, it's going to show you

the tools that we just added to Claude.

So, watch this. Yo, create a note in my

Obsidian detailing the best way to make

French press coffee. Let's go. Now, it's

going to start thinking. Then it's going

to realize, oh, I have a tool available

to me. I'm going to try and use that.

Let's look behind the scenes here. Yeah,

it's getting it ready now. It's going to

ask you permission to use that tool

because it is accessing things outside

of its normal purview. Sure, I will

allow it just this one time, though.

Okay, so it said it did it. Let's go

take a look.

There it is in my notes. Are you

stinking kidding me? H, it works the

same way for search. I'm going to create

a fun note here. Just something random.

Cool. Now I'm going to ask it to search.

Hey, search my vault for something about

drinking tea. I'll allow one time to do

the simple search.

It's going to do a broader search. It'll

try a few times. It's going to read the

note or get the file contents. But see,

here's what's happening here. This is

why this is amazing. It's not having to

authenticate. Doesn't know anything

about that. Doesn't care. Doesn't know

any code or API, anything at all. It

just knows that it can call that tool,

use that task tool, and that's it. And I

got the information. This is so powerful

for us. Are you kidding me? Coffee break

for that.

Hey, never chat from the future here.

What I'm showing you here, it's cool,

but it's all local. At this time stamp,

I'm going to show you the Docker MCP

gateway and how we can make any tool you

build remotely accessible from things

like, I don't know, N8N. Dude, it's so

cool. I'll see you there. Back to the

video. I seriously have goosebumps just

talking about this. And I've been using

this for a minute now. What do you say

we go add a few more MCP servers?

Because we can add a lot. We can go

crazy. Let's go to the catalog. duck.go.

Sure, I want one. It's already there.

Fetch. It'll grab URLs. Got it. Or it'll

grab the contents of a website given a

URL. Oh, they have so many cool ones.

Oh, they have Brave search. I need an

API key. I don't feel like getting that

right now. Oo, Airbnb search. Let's do

that. Ooh, YouTube transcripts. We can

do that. That's crazy. Okay, let's try

it out. Now, this time I'm going to add

some more clients. Let's add um cursor.

Click connect. Done. LM Studio. Click

connect. Done. Now, it's that easy

because I already have cursor in LM

Studio installed. And behind the scenes,

all it's doing is updating an MCP server

config file that each one of these apps

has. Now, let's try LM Studio. I'm going

to restart it real quick to make sure

I've got everything I need. And LM

Studio again is what we can use to run

local um LLMs. I'll load a model. We'll

do Gemma 312B. And then I think I'll go

down here to my plug and see. Oh, yep.

There it is. We'll connect our MCP

tools. MCP Docker sitting right there.

If I click that tool icon, we can see

all the tools, I think. Oh, yeah. There

it is. Beautiful. Now, let's ask it to

do something. So, I'll say, "Find the

top 10 best Japanese restaurants in

Dallas. Use the dot.go tool and then

create a note in my vault with your

findings using the Obsidian tool. Local

model. Let's see how you do, buddy."

Keep in mind, these MCP servers are

running locally on my computer. I'll

give it permission. Go ahead, bud. Okay.

But it didn't create the note in my

vault. Let's try it again. Okay. Gemma's

kind of dumb. Let's try DeepSeek, a

model that can think.

Give her permission. Come on, buddy. You

can do this. All right. Gave permission

to Obsidian. Okay. It found the Japanese

restaurants. Let's check Obsidian. It

did it. Oh no.

Local models are dumb. But it did the

tool call, which is what we cared about.

If we did that same thing in Claude, it

would move very quickly.

Okay. Said I did it. Let's check it out.

Oh, I did a great job. Check that out.

That's so fun. Let's see if Cursor can

do the same thing. I'm going to restart

Cursor.

Grab the transcript

for this YouTube video. Look at that.

Run the tool. And this is the free

version of Cursor, too. Oh my gosh, it

grabbed it. Now, let's add that to my

Obsidian Vault. It's so powerful, man.

Okay, it finished. Let's go check our

note. There it is. Grabbed my YouTube

video, summarized it, put it in our

note. Come on. Are you not excited about

that coffee stinking break?

You know, people ask me, "Is that

enthusiasm? Is that fake? Is that

scripted?" No, it's not. Ask my wife.

I'm always like this. All right, here we

go. It's time for you to build your very

own MCP server. Custom, just how you

want it. Because there may not be an MCP

server out there that does what you want

it to do. So, right now, I'm going to

walk you through building three MCP

servers. Yeah, three. Because it's kind

of easy. I did a lot of work to figure

out how to make this work well. I went

through the pain for you. The first one

will be a fun demo, a simple dice roller

just to kick the tires, make sure things

are working. Then I'll show you how to

build some real tools involving APIs.

But seriously, you're going to feel like

you can do anything after learning how

to do this. The world we're living in

right now is crazy. Let's get started.

Now, the secret sauce behind all this is

this prompt that I built. Here it is.

Network Chuck's MCP server build prompt.

contained in this one prompt is

everything an AI will need to build you

an MCP server. All you have to do is

describe what you want. Let's do it

right now. By the way, if you don't want

to run all this LLM stuff right now, I

do have this entire example in my GitHub

link right here. Just around maybe here,

we'll tell it something. Okay, I want to

build a very simple dice roller MCP

server. I wanted to do coin flips, DND

stuff, any kind of dice roller mechanic.

Bake that in, make it simple and clean.

Let's copy and paste this whole thing.

Pick an LLM that you know is pretty good

at coding. Your quality will vary. I

right now love Claude Opus 41. He's kind

of amazing. Just going to paste this in

and go. Coffee break while AI makes

magic things happen. And what this will

spit out is everything you need to build

this server. It'll walk you through it

step by step. I think I asked it to do

too many things.

It's almost done. Okay, it finally

finished. It gave us a lot of stuff and

we're going to follow it step by step.

Now, it created us five files. A Docker

file, requirements, dice server, readin,

and a cloud. MD file. You really only

need the first four unless you're using

clot. And all the files should be right

above it here. So, first I'll create a

directory. Call it my dice or something.

I don't know, something stupid. Jump in

there. cd my dice. And we'll create our

Docker file real quick. I'm just going

to PB paste that in there. It's a

special thing on Mac.

The Docker file will describe how to

build a Docker container, which we're

about to do. We'll then do the

requirements file, which is almost

nothing. Requirements.txt

and then the server, which will be the

biggest piece of this.

dice_server.py.

And by the way, to create these files in

the command line, you can use nano them,

I don't care. And then finally, the

readme file, which is just nice to have.

Now, that's all we really need to do

this. We're going to run one command

right now. We'll follow the instructions

here. Yep, right here. Docker build.

Paste that in. And it's going to build a

Docker container right now. Quick coffee

break.

And what it's doing, if you're not

familiar with this, is it's taking all

that stuff, the Docker file, which

describes how to build the Docker

container. It's going to add our Python

server config. And it's done. If we type

in Docker image ls, we'll see our DICE

MCP server right there along with our

other MCP servers that we added through

the Docker catalog. Speaking of catalog,

we need to make our own. Now, see here

in the instructions, they say you can

make a catalog directory if you don't

already have one. You probably already

have one. And if we type in ls do our

home directory look in Docker the Docker

directory. It's hidden inside MCP and

cataloges. See I already have a few here

just kind of chilling out. If you just

install this you'll just see

dockermcp.yaml.

We're going to make our own right now.

Your AI prompt should spit out a custom

YAML. We'll grab that. We'll create our

own right now in that location.

Docker MCP cataloges. I'll call it my

custom catalog.

Done. And there's one more thing we have

to do and it's going to tell us right

here. We need to edit the registry. Now,

this is how the Docker MCP gateway is

going to work. Docker has their built-in

catalog. You can also add custom

cataloges like this or like this. And

that's just a catalog. Like you shop for

the MCP server you want to add. Once you

do add them, they get added to what's

called the registry, which if I ls

the Docker MCP directory, you can see

the registry file is right there.

registry.yaml. Let's look inside that

real quick.

And there is simply a reference to our

installed servers. And it's when you

actually install it and register it that

it shows up here. Now, we're not going

to be able to do that through the guey.

So, we have to add ours manually here.

It's actually pretty easy. We're going

to do nano or whatever you want to use

to edit this file. And at the very

bottom, using the same format, keeping

everything lined up, we will add our

server. It's called dice according to my

prompt here. And we put that ref thing.

Crl + xy. Enter to save. That's all we

got to worry about. And let me tell you,

uh, we're almost done. I was going to

say we're done, but we're not done yet.

We do need to edit our cloud MCP server

config. We're going to change it to look

something like this. I'm just going to

copy this and paste it into my cloud

config here. And there's a few things

happening. Notice it's still running the

Docker MCP gateway command. It's just

running a few more options. And I

actually need to change two things here.

First, I'll need to make sure I change

my home directory to be the exact home

directory I'm using. It's going to mount

that as a Docker volume. And look,

cursor is like, let me help you out.

Thank you, cursor. And then down here,

you can notice that with the Docker MCP

command, we can run more than one

catalog. And that's the secret sauce

here. We're referencing the main Docker

catalog. And then also our custom one,

which I need to change that name because

I did not name it custom. I named it my

custom catalog.

That should be it, I think. And then

notice we're referencing this registry

that we already edited. And that should

be all we have to worry about. Going to

save this file. And I'm going to launch

Claude. Fingers crossed we get no

errors. Claude, don't disappoint me,

buddy. Here we go. You'll get a scary

error if it doesn't like it because it

tries to test the containers. So far so

good. Click on my tools. Go down to my

MCP toolkit gateway and see if my tools

are there. Come on. Flip a coin. That

looks nice. Oh, come on. Come on. Come

on. Roll. There's all the stuff. There's

all the tools. Cool. It's showing up.

The MCP tools are available, but do they

work? Let's try it out. Now, the read me

file gave me some options to say or try.

Okay, let's roll a 2d6

for me using the dice tool.

Come on. Come on. I will give you

permission, buddy. You got this.

It worked. Yes. Oh, let's do something

simple like flip a coin using the dice

tool. Man, so cool. I can generate D and

D stats. Let's try this.

I don't play D and D, so I don't know

what that means. Oh my gosh, what's it

even doing? Well, that's cool either

way, which I have no idea what's

happening, but it seems awesome. Okay,

we got a simple MCP server out of the

way, but what about something that is a

bit more complex? For example, I use a

timer tool called toggle, which I use to

track how much time I'm using to script

and and film. So, for example, right now

over here in my browser, I'm currently

filming and I've been doing that for 51

minutes. Toggle has a great API, but no

MCP server. I would like to use an MCP

server so I can chat with Claude or

whatever LLM I have and control my

timers or check in on my timers. Let's

do that right now. So, back here at the

prompt, I just got to describe what I

want.

I want to create a toggle MCP server.

This will

use the toggle API. Now, I'm not going

to sit here and talk about this the

entire time. You'll see what I write,

but I'm having to make sure I answer all

these questions here.

All right, that's what I want. I want it

to do three things. Start a timer, stop

a timer, and view existing timers. And

I'm just pasting the link to the toggle

API documentation. Let's go find it.

Okay, it should be able to figure

everything out past that. All right,

Claude, new project for you. Go coffee

break while I build this another MCP

server.

I also have it programmed to ask any

questions that aren't answered that it

needs to have answered to complete this

task. Now, remember, when you're working

with AI, it's all about context. If you

provide it enough context, good context

for what you want to do and you describe

it well, you're going to have amazing

results. Okay, it finished. Same steps

as before with one minor difference. So,

I'll do my Docker file. So, I'll create

a new directory, add in all the files.

All right. Now, I'll build that new

server.

This is so cool. And then I'll need to

add my API key. Now, remember the cool

thing about Docker MCP gateways, we can

manage our secrets with Docker.

Remember, I haven't told you that yet.

The Docker MCP gateway, it can help you

manage your secrets, things like API

keys and tokens. Keep that stuff out of

your code and nestled safely inside

Docker MCP secrets. Anyways, back to me.

Also, I explain more about Docker MCP

gateways later in the video. As I

mentioned before, you don't want to miss

that part. So I'll do docker mcp secret

list or ls rather to see what we have

just our obsidian API key that we added

earlier in the guey but we can do it

manually here as well. So I'll do docker

mcp secret and it's going to be set and

my toggle API token environment variable

and then I'll add in my API key right

now. Done. Secret set. Let's do ls once

more to see if it's there. Yep, there it

is. Now it's time for the catalog piece.

Now I could make a new catalog. You can

have a bunch or I can just add this to

my existing catalog to make it easy. And

I think I'll just do that. So I'll grab

just the part I need, the toggle server

itself describing all of its tools. And

then edit my custom catalog

and add it right after dice. I think

it's all lined up. Awesome. Crl + XY

enter to save. And then we'll update our

registry. adding that tool right below

dice.

Now, because that catalog is already in

our Claude configuration, we don't have

to worry about it. We'll just restart

Claude. And that should be all we have

to do. Fingers crossed. Here we go. I'm

doing this live. Like, what you saw was

real. Everything past this point. No

errors. Oh my gosh, that's so good.

Okay, let's check our tools. The timer

stuff might be at the bottom here. Ah,

there it is. Start, stop, view, timers.

Oh, okay. So, currently I'm filming and

I have a timer for that. Do I have any

current timers right now? I'm not even

going to tell it what tool to use. Let

it figure it out. Come on. Come on. Of

course, buddy. Here you go.

Yes, it's I almost spilled my coffee.

Oh, no. I did. But it worked. I got to

clean this up.

You'd be surprised how often this

happens. Okay, now let's say um stop

that timer.

Can it do it? No, you didn't. It totally

did. Okay, now restart it. Come on. Oh

my gosh, it did. That's so cool.

Isn't that just the most insanely

powerful thing you've ever seen? You can

do whatever you want. How about we build

a hacking MCP? Yes, I'm going to show

you how to build right now a Kali Linux

hacking MCP. This one is interesting and

we won't need any special uh API stuff.

We're just going to run a Kali Linux

container, which is actually supported

now on a Mac. So, that's really cool.

We're going to run it right here on our

machine. And I've got a description here

that I've used. Let's see how well this

does. Okay, that should give it a lot of

information. Let's throw it in there and

let it go to work. Now, it may kick back

on you because you're trying to build a

hacking container, but if you frame it

the right way, it'll be fine usually.

Okay, I like that. Happy authorized

testing. It's done. Let's build it out.

Same story as before. for we'll create a

new directory, create all our files,

build our container, which might take a

moment. So, perfect time for I mean,

well, you know, by this point. Tell you

what, while you're sitting there, have

you hacked the YouTube algorithm today?

Let's make sure you do. Hit that like

button, subscribe, notification bell,

comment. You got to hack YouTube today.

Ethically, of course.

Okay, that actually was pretty fast,

which makes me a little bit nervous, but

we'll see how it goes.

right under our toggle server and edit

our registry.

All right, it's done. I really hope this

works. We're going to restart Claude.

No errors. No errors. Come on. Come on.

Okay, let's see if our Cali tools are in

there. We should see some pretty crazy

stuff in there. If it's all working

correctly. H, it's not there. What tools

am I looking for? There should be like

an end mapap scan. Nothing. It hates me.

Let's double check our work. Maybe it

wants my secret set. That's why it's

failing.

I feel good this time.

Yes. Okay. I just wanted the secret set.

Okay, cool. Now, let's test some Kali

Linux

scan on network 10.70.2.024.

do a pretty quick one. Okay, we're

allowing the tool if this works. Oh my

goodness. Oh, there's a white list. Did

I put in a white list myself? Oh, yes.

Yes, yes, okay. Okay, it put in guard

rails for me, Claude. Oh, all right.

So dumb.

Remove the white list stuff. I want this

wide open.

put in guard rails

can't stop me from hacking. Okay, I got

it to give me what I what I needed. I

think I'll have to adjust the Docker

file and the server. I'll just do them

all. Who knows what this LLM changed

requirements is the same.

Let's build it again. That should be it.

I want restart Claude. Let's check our

tools. Make sure they're there. There

they are. Okay. Again. Okay. Okay, I'm

going to change it to make sure I'm

running as root. Okay, that should do

it. Building again. Restarting Claude.

Come on. What the heck? Oh, the Docker

file was screwing me up. Yeah, comment

out the user.

That's what it was. This is so dumb.

Let's build it again.

All right, better work this time.

It's driving me nuts.

Let's do a Docker PS. See if it's

running. It's running, but it's only

running while we're doing this. Kelly

Linux is being used right now by an LLM,

by AI. I can talk to my hacking box with

plain language. Hey, go hack that thing.

And it does it. Now, while that's

scanning, I'm going to show you one I've

already built using the exact same

methods we've used here so far. It's on

my MacBook. I want to show you this one

because I've played with this one a lot.

This will all be in the documentation

below. Got a few more tools here. Let's

try this. It's just so crazy. We can do

this. All right. Doing an end mapap

scan. This is so awesome. I finished in

endmap not necto durb buster. And in

case you're wondering, you can use all

these things with claw code as well.

This one I don't know what's going on

with him. He's taking forever.

So in case you're wondering, I'm using

the DVWA web app. An app that's

intentionally insecure so you can try

and hack things. And there's a log of it

right here. Me hitting it. Oh, cool.

This one's working now. WordPress scan.

WP scan. And dude, this thing's killing

it.

SQL map coming in. I'm like using AI to

hack this from like three different

computers right now. This one finished.

It found out what it was. Now, if you're

like me, you got to be wondering, how is

this all working? Like, are these MCP

servers actually running as Docker

containers? Are they running all the

time? If I run Docker PS right now, am I

going to see containers running? No.

Then what's happening? And are all MCP

servers local like this? or are there

remote MCP servers? Let's talk about

that right now. We're about to get super

nerdy. I hope you're ready for this.

Let's dive in. Now, first thing I want

to show you is that whenever we're

actually engaging with an MCP server

here with Docker Desktop, it's running

those MCP server containers

briefly and then taking them down. You

want to see? Watch. Let's do this

command. Hope it works on Mac. I haven't

tried this. do watch dash n0.5

docker ps

brew install watch

dang.

All right, we'll just run it while we're

doing stuff. Let's use claude to call a

tool and we'll just spam docker ps. Use

Airbnb tool to find a house in Tokyo for

a family of eight for two weeks starting

October. Let's get our command ready.

Allow once. Let's watch. Oh, wait. I

wasn't ready. Ah, here we go.

It was too fast. I didn't catch it in

time. We'll just use this watch command

here or this while true loop. Ah,

perfect.

Let's see if it shows up now. Ah, there

it is. We briefly caught it. It's so

fast. That took longer than I thought it

would be to track it. All that to say,

every time we engage with an MCP server,

a Docker container for the MCP server is

spun up and spun down. They're not

running all the time, only when we need

them, which is kind of cool. But that's

only running an MCP server locally.

There's actually other ways to access

MCP servers, specifically remote MCP

servers. There's one from Coin Gecko,

which is a popular site we can use to

find out the prices of cryptocurrency.

So, we'll have this Coin Gecko MCP

server to cursor, for example. We'll go

to our cursor settings and go to our MCP

and integrations config and we'll add a

new custom MCP server. And what it's

going to do is open up a MCP server

file. And by the way, this is exactly

how most of the applications we use

look. In fact, watch. Look at Claude.

This right here is Claude's config. I'll

open that in cursor too. And now you're

not seeing double. These are two

different uh config files, but it's a

standard, right? So they look the

stinking same. But here for cursor, I'm

going to change this config. Adding coin

gecko right here. Notice our Docker MCP

server is running a command with the

Docker command and all these arguments.

We'll cover that in a second. But this

one here is actually just reaching out

to an external URL. This is an external

MCP server. We're not hosting it.

Someone else is. And it's using this

transport SSE. We'll cover that here in

a moment. I'm going to save it. We'll

open up a new chat here and say, what is

the current price of XRP? Use the Coin

Gecko MCP server. We'll let it run the

tool. Let it get the sample price. And

there it is. So, that's super handy. But

this kind of drove me crazy. And if

you're like me, you probably thought the

same thing. Like, how is this

communication working? What do MCP

servers use for communication for

transport? Well, it depends on if you're

running local or remote. The most

interesting one that I'm like, how is

this working was docker because we're

simply I mean this all this is doing.

It's configured to run the Docker

command plus MCP gateway run. Like

literally, the command will be like

this. I can probably run it right now.

Docker MCP gateway run. Like, yeah,

that's what it's doing. And look, it's

actually running. and listing all those

tools and the server is now up. I'll

stop that. So, what's really interesting

is every time you try to use an MCP

server with Docker, it's actually going

to run the MCP gateway and then run the

specific MCP server. It's kind of crazy.

We'll cover that here in a second. I

know I keep saying that, but again,

seriously though, if we're just running

commands, how is this working? What's

the communication? It's actually just

using standard out, standard input and

output via the command line. That's it.

This is direct communication between

local processes on the same machine.

JSON RPC messages are exchanged through

pipes. Meaning the transport is almost

nothing. It's just like you sitting next

to me and I go, "Hi." Like that's it.

There's no need to go over a network or

anything, which is fantastic because

there's like no latency, no network

overhead. And you'll see that in

situations like this where we're running

Docker MCP servers locally. Now, you can

run MCP servers without Docker. Docker

is just making it crazy easy for us. But

most of the time when you're running on

your local machine, you're going to be

using standard input and output. But

what about when it's remote, not on the

same computer, not on the same network.

Well, we're going to be using HTTP. And

in most cases, it should be HTTPS.

And that's for client to server. It's

going to be using SSE or server side

events, which is what we see right here

as our transport for server to client.

And this is a lot more complex, right?

Like you're setting up a web server at

this point. You're setting up

authentication. So operating a remote

MCP server is a whole thing. Whereas

running your own MCP server in your own

Docker container on your local machine,

you're just using standard input and

output. All local, man. It's awesome.

But now, real quick, I want to talk

about this MCP gateway thing because

it's a little crazy. And by crazy, I

mean awesome. Normally, you'd have to

configure an MCP server like this, one

at a time, one service. So, we'd have

multiple entries here for whatever

service we want. But we saw that in

Docker, we didn't add just one server to

our config, did we? We added a bunch.

Here's our list of servers right here.

We have what, how many? six. Yet in our

MCP server list here in cursor, we have

one MCP server set up with Docker.

That's the gateway. If I already use

some marketing speak right now, buckle

your seat belts. The Docker MCP gateway

provides secure, centralized, and

scalable orchestration of AI tools

through containerized MCP servers. What

does that mean? It means when we have

Claude or Cursor, our clients, we just

connect them to one MCP server. We only

need to manage one connection. And this

one connection, this one MCP server

gives us access to a lot of stuff, a lot

of other MCP servers. So, I don't know

about you, but it seems like this is a

lot cleaner than this. And of course,

we'd also have to deal with all the

authentication, the secrets for each

connection, for each client that

connects. But not with Docker MCP

gateway. It's all centralized right

there. Killer. I hope you're starting to

see how cool this is. Or is it just me?

I don't know. Comment below if it's just

me or if you're joining me in this

excitement. Hold on. I need some more

coffee. I'll be right back. You can get

some more coffee, too.

Okay, that's steaming, man. Check that

out.

Almost don't even need to drink it.

Yeah, I do. Now, let's get to the CLI

real quick. My favorite place in the

entire world. Let's go. You saw that we

have some new commands with Docker.

Things like Docker MCP gateway. We just

tried that out. Our LLM app is actually

going to run that command for us or we

can run this manually. We don't really

need to unless we want it to be accessed

remotely. We can actually do this.

We can specify the transport to be

standard input output SSE streaming to

make it available over the network. I

know right. Imagine running your own

Docker MCP gateway server for all the

things in your home network or your

business. just okay we're on the same

page here. I think we also have the

docker mcp catalog command which we can

look at our if we do ls we can see we

have our default docker mcp catalog and

there is an official way where you can

create your own docker mcp server and

submit that to be added to the official

catalog. You can do that but you have to

get it approved. You have to wait and

I'm not very patient. I don't know about

you. Docker actually does help us manage

our secrets. So Dr. MCP secrets. Now

what's a secret? What are you talking

about? Things like API keys, ooth. You

can securely manage your secrets with

Docker. Now, two more crazy things I

want to show you. Right now, we're

running Docker MCP gateway with Docker

Desktop. That's like the official way to

do it right now because they have the

MCP gateway in beta that you can run

alongside of it. But if you check out

the documentation, and I bet they're

going to make it better and better and

better and better. Dude, this coffee is

like hitting me like crazy. I love it.

I'll put this link below, but you can

run the Docker MCP gateway as a Docker

container totally apart from the Docker

MCP toolkit and Docker Desktop. Been

saying Docker a lot. Coffee break. Which

means yes, you could run a headless

server somewhere else running all kinds

of crazy stuff. And I'm going to show

you this real quick. I'm going to run

the gateway Docker MCP gateway run

transport. I'm going run it with SSE. I

think that's how we do it. Yes. So now

it's actually running over the network

instead of standard input output. It's

on port 8811. That's my IP address. So,

real quick, I'm going to jump into NAN,

my local NAN configuration here in my

studio. This is going to be so powerful.

I'll create a new workflow. I'll have an

AI agent come in and do something crazy.

And I'll give it a tool. How about an

MCP server? I think it'll just be HTTP

slash the IP address port 8811.

Let's see.

Oh, it sees everything. Yes. Look at

that. Over the stinking network. Okay.

Okay. So, let's um I'm too excited. I'm

so sorry. Let's give it a crazy prompt.

Okay. Three steps. Find the best

restaurant and Airbnb next to it and

then put it in my Obsidian vault using

three different tools. Can it do it? I

have no idea. Let's see. I'm so excited

to see if this works.

Something broke, though.

How to tell to ignore robots. See if

it'll be okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's

great. Yes.

Look at the logs here in the terminal.

It using all these things, all these

tools, but I forgot step three. Oh, I

didn't give it memory. Hold on. You know

what? Let's try to oneshot this.

Let's go. This is magic. This is pure

magic.

You did it. There it is. All right. So,

where's the best restaurant? Okay. So,

it gave me a lot of options. Needs some

work on the prompt, but still, it used

all the tools just like that over the

network. And it was with one command I

did, right? Like that wasn't that hard.

Okay, you just learned MCP. Not only can

you use an MCP server, but you learned

how to build one yourself and you know

how it works. That's a skill. Put that

on your stinking resume. Who do you know

that knows how to do this? The list is

not very long right now. Now, I would

love to know what you thought of this

video and what you plan on building with

MCP servers. Please comment below and

let me know. Also, if you like more

stuff like this, more AI automation,

which is like more real world, right?

Check out my other video on N8N, an

automation platform that's just

mind-boggling. That video was so fun to

make and I plan to make another one on

top of that. And of course, you saw how

I connected our MCP environment, the

Docker MCP gateway to N8N, opening up

just a billion possibilities. It's

endless. We're in a gold rush

opportunity right now just to learn and

create and do things like crazy. Don't

waste it. That's all I got. I'll catch

you guys next time.