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Scott and Wes sit down with Kent C. Dodds to break down MCP, context engineering, and what it really takes to build effective AI-powered tools. They dig into practical examples, UI patterns, performance tradeoffs, and whether the future of the web lives in chat or the browser.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:44 Introduction to Kent C. Dodds
02:44 What is MCP?
03:28 Context Engineering in AI
04:49 Practical Examples of MCP
06:33 Challenges with Context Bloat
08:08 Brought to you by Sentry.io
09:37 Why not give AI API access directly?
12:28 How is an MCP different from Skills
14:58 MCP optimizations and efficiency levers
16:24 MCP UI and Its Importance
19:18 Where are we at today with MCP
24:06 What is the development flow for building MCP servers?
27:17 Building out an MCP UI.
29:29 Returning HTML, when to render.
36:17 Calling tools from your UI
37:25 What is Goose?
38:42 Are browsers cooked? Is everything via chat?
