WEBVTT 00:00.160 --> 00:05.440 So, look, I know I often start these things by saying today is a big day. 00:06.000 --> 00:09.400 But here's the thing today is a big day. 00:09.400 --> 00:10.760 It's a really big day. 00:10.760 --> 00:14.040 So I am absolutely entitled to say welcome. 00:14.040 --> 00:16.000 Welcome to week three, day three. 00:16.040 --> 00:17.360 Today is a big day. 00:17.520 --> 00:24.520 Today is of course MCP day and unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard the excitement, 00:24.560 --> 00:32.120 the buzz, potentially the overhype around MCP that some people think is the next, next best thing 00:32.160 --> 00:37.600 after sliced bread and some people think is overhyped and is on the way out. 00:37.640 --> 00:42.440 Whatever your viewpoint, or even if you haven't ever heard of it before, by the end of today you're 00:42.440 --> 00:43.440 going to know all about it. 00:43.440 --> 00:47.440 And particularly you know about how to use it within an A-10. 00:47.560 --> 00:52.480 Before we dive in, I want to give you the big picture here about MCP. 00:52.520 --> 00:57.960 And it starts with me saying saying a few principles, which I'd like you to keep in mind during this. 00:58.520 --> 01:05.530 The first of them is that there is a major, major innovation that sits behind a genetic AI. 01:05.810 --> 01:08.530 And look, it's not MCP. 01:09.130 --> 01:12.490 MCP is not the big deal about genetic AI. 01:12.530 --> 01:15.210 The big deal is tools. 01:15.210 --> 01:16.770 The big deal is this thing that I. 01:16.770 --> 01:23.530 That I keep telling you about, about the way that you can get an LLM to generate tokens and you can 01:23.570 --> 01:28.650 you can tell it that that by the way, as you generate these tokens, keep in mind that you could you 01:28.650 --> 01:31.650 could tell me that you want me to run a few tools. 01:31.650 --> 01:33.370 And this is what the tools do. 01:33.410 --> 01:38.010 And you put that information in the system prompt that sets the scene for the LLM. 01:38.210 --> 01:41.450 And then when it's generating tokens, it decides to call the tools. 01:41.570 --> 01:48.450 So it's this clever, clever trick for making sure that you can get an LLM to make decisions about running 01:48.490 --> 01:55.410 tools just from the tokens that it generates, and that that's the big thing about Agentic AI. 01:55.930 --> 02:01.570 There's masses of excitement about MCP, but and a lot of it is very much warranted. 02:01.610 --> 02:07.620 There's a lot of reason to be excited about MCP as we will cover, but some of it has gotten a bit confused 02:07.620 --> 02:10.220 that people should be excited about tools. 02:10.220 --> 02:15.180 That's the big thing, and they're getting it kind of conflated with MCP, which, as you'll discover, 02:15.180 --> 02:17.820 is a great way to connect LMS to tools. 02:18.140 --> 02:24.780 It's about being able to to reuse and share tools, but the real hype should be about tools rather than 02:24.820 --> 02:27.220 MCP, which is just a great standard. 02:27.220 --> 02:30.900 So I just want to make sure that that you keep that in the back of your mind. 02:31.180 --> 02:36.980 Differentiate between the use of tools, which is the really big deal, and MCP, which is an exciting 02:36.980 --> 02:40.300 standard which makes sharing tools even more possible. 02:40.460 --> 02:43.220 Okay, with that in mind, let's dig in. 02:43.220 --> 02:45.060 And of course, we should start with what? 02:45.100 --> 02:53.700 What is MCP that I imagine I'm guessing actually probably like maybe 50%, 40% of, you know, already. 02:53.740 --> 02:58.660 MCP stands for the Model Context Protocol from anthropic. 02:58.820 --> 03:02.640 And it's something that was released towards the end of 2024. 03:02.880 --> 03:06.400 And to start with, it wasn't all that much of a big deal. 03:06.440 --> 03:08.320 It had some traction, but not much. 03:08.400 --> 03:12.920 But then, wow, it really took off around March April 2025. 03:13.000 --> 03:15.440 It became a really big deal indeed. 03:15.680 --> 03:22.600 And anthropic themselves describe it as the USB-C port for AI applications. 03:22.600 --> 03:25.200 And that's why there's the picture of a USB-C port. 03:25.240 --> 03:31.800 People that are my Agentic AI course may remember the point when I got an image generated and it was 03:31.840 --> 03:34.920 USB-A port, which was not really the point, but this you'll see. 03:34.920 --> 03:36.440 This time I have improved. 03:36.480 --> 03:42.520 This is indeed a USB-C port, which is how anthropic describe the MCP protocol. 03:42.840 --> 03:45.920 And the other way they describe it is it is a standard. 03:45.960 --> 03:53.520 Is it an it is an open source standard for how you connect AI applications to external systems. 03:53.520 --> 03:55.800 And really by that they mean tools. 03:55.800 --> 03:57.760 You can use it for a few other things too. 03:57.800 --> 03:59.920 But tools is the thing that's really taken off. 03:59.920 --> 04:06.050 So really, you should think of this as it's a way to connect AI applications to tools, to tools that 04:06.090 --> 04:07.210 other people have written. 04:07.210 --> 04:10.530 Not to your own tools, but to to tools all over the world. 04:10.650 --> 04:12.810 That's what MCP is all about. 04:12.850 --> 04:16.050 And so let's let's go a little bit more concrete. 04:16.090 --> 04:16.890 What does this mean. 04:16.890 --> 04:17.850 It actually is. 04:17.890 --> 04:19.130 And what is it not. 04:19.290 --> 04:24.610 So it is an easy way to use tools that somebody else wrote. 04:24.610 --> 04:29.370 If somebody else built a tool and you didn't build it and you don't have it and you want to use it. 04:29.490 --> 04:34.730 Then MCP gives you a really easy way just to stick it into your AI application. 04:34.730 --> 04:40.770 And you may know that that programs like Claude, uh, you can just just connect it to MCP and it will 04:40.770 --> 04:42.130 just use those tools. 04:42.130 --> 04:44.610 So it's an easy way to use somebody else's tools. 04:44.690 --> 04:46.570 It's also the flip side of that. 04:46.570 --> 04:51.570 If you've written a tool yourself, if you're in the business of writing, uh, different APIs and you've 04:51.570 --> 04:57.130 got something that could be a useful tool for an LLM, you can turn it into something that anyone else 04:57.130 --> 05:00.570 can instantly reuse using MCP. 05:00.930 --> 05:07.540 And so generally speaking, it's just an easy way to hook up llms to tools, even if you didn't write 05:07.540 --> 05:09.980 the tools so you don't quite know what they do. 05:10.100 --> 05:16.580 It's like something which describes it perfectly to an LLM and the game changer. 05:16.660 --> 05:22.780 The reason it's such a huge deal isn't because there's anything massively innovative about it, and 05:22.820 --> 05:24.380 anthropic is very clear about that. 05:24.380 --> 05:27.980 They didn't invent anything that's hugely game changing. 05:28.140 --> 05:34.140 The thing that's made it really take off is that it's been so widely adopted, everyone has taken it 05:34.140 --> 05:40.020 as the standard, it's open source, so anyone can implement it and use it, and it's just really taken 05:40.060 --> 05:40.380 off. 05:40.380 --> 05:45.340 And it's one of these sort of ecosystem things that once lots of people are using it, it becomes a 05:45.380 --> 05:47.100 kind of victim of its own success. 05:47.100 --> 05:52.740 It's like suddenly there's so many people sharing tools using MCP that there's just masses to choose 05:52.740 --> 05:54.900 from, and it's really convenient. 05:55.060 --> 06:02.180 So the big the big thing about MCP is the massive number of tools that allows you to connect with really 06:02.180 --> 06:07.590 easily and to cover some of the things that MCP is not, or some of the misconceptions. 06:07.710 --> 06:12.110 The first point to make is that it's not the tools themselves. 06:12.150 --> 06:19.230 MCP is, of course, the glue between your LM and the tools, or between something like N810 and the 06:19.230 --> 06:19.870 tools. 06:19.870 --> 06:23.710 It's the, the, the interface or it's a standard way to have that interface. 06:23.950 --> 06:30.710 It's a way to take a tool and to to describe it with language, with, with just, just English and 06:30.710 --> 06:36.350 then with a description of the parameters in English or in any natural language, in a way that an LM 06:36.350 --> 06:42.590 can read that in and understand it and then use that tool well, all packaged together in one nice package. 06:42.870 --> 06:43.830 That's all it is. 06:43.990 --> 06:47.110 And the technology underlying it is nothing particularly new. 06:47.150 --> 06:49.390 As I say, anthropic is very clear on this point. 06:49.430 --> 06:52.190 It's using just common sense technologies. 06:52.190 --> 06:53.910 It's really all about the adoption. 06:53.910 --> 06:58.310 It's that it's it's taken off and everyone has embraced this way of doing it. 06:58.310 --> 06:59.790 And look, it needs to be said. 06:59.830 --> 07:06.370 MCP is all the rage at the moment, but it's still entirely possible that MCP might be more of a sort 07:06.370 --> 07:08.370 of transitory fad. 07:08.410 --> 07:13.970 It might be something that gets replaced by something else, but it's very, very hot at the moment. 07:13.970 --> 07:19.410 But there are a number of other evolving approaches for integrating llms with tools. 07:19.410 --> 07:24.770 There's skills also by anthropic that's more oriented around products like Claude. 07:24.770 --> 07:31.570 But you could certainly people that use use a Claude skills now, also OpenAI skills, the same thing. 07:31.610 --> 07:33.530 You certainly can see the parallels. 07:33.730 --> 07:39.770 And then code mode is another new exciting idea that anthropic trying to package in with MCP, with 07:39.770 --> 07:45.130 an idea that you can use it with MCP, but I'm sort of seeing that it might well end up being an alternative 07:45.130 --> 07:45.930 to MCP. 07:46.090 --> 07:53.170 So it's perfectly possible that MCP itself won't won't persist for a very long time. 07:53.330 --> 07:56.050 Right now, of course, it's incredibly useful. 07:56.450 --> 08:03.490 But but regardless, even if MCP in its current form doesn't last forever, then I think whatever replaces 08:03.490 --> 08:09.980 it will have many of the same ideas, so it's still great to learn all about it as we will today. 08:10.060 --> 08:15.460 So look, if you ever worked for a management consultant, one of the cliched things you sometimes hear 08:15.460 --> 08:20.540 is that when you're making a convincing, compelling argument, it should come in threes. 08:20.580 --> 08:25.420 There should be three powerful bullets, three slides, that kind of thing. 08:25.620 --> 08:31.420 Well, I've now got three slides, each with three sections on them, three things to make, and they're 08:31.420 --> 08:32.940 all a little bit technical. 08:32.940 --> 08:39.380 So so the next video is going to get a little bit more into the sort of nitty gritty of how MCP works. 08:39.540 --> 08:45.020 And just enough only the stuff that you kind of need to know for it all to fall into place when we use 08:45.020 --> 08:45.260 it. 08:45.420 --> 08:47.940 It's somewhat optional that you could listen to it quickly. 08:47.940 --> 08:49.380 If you're not all that into it. 08:49.380 --> 08:53.540 You don't need to know this, but I do think it's helpful context. 08:53.580 --> 08:55.580 It's really good grounding for you. 08:55.580 --> 08:56.060 So. 08:56.140 --> 08:57.980 So put up with me if you wouldn't mind. 08:58.060 --> 09:03.900 Sit through the next video, get a sense of the technology because then when we build it, hopefully 09:03.900 --> 09:05.220 a lot of it will make sense. 09:05.220 --> 09:05.980 Let's do this.