Exploring mCP: From Novice to Pro in AI Development

mCP Zero to Hero Let's Go from I know nothing to hopefully I'm a hero and I'm doing some cool stuff Crystal supports

mCP and this is what I ultimately want I use cursor every day but my AI doesn't have any access to any tools outside of

what's out of the box inside of cursor and so I'm not going to start in curs though the number one thing people

always ask me to comment on and review and show is Klein Klein has the crest implementation of model Contex protocol

in my opinion because supposedly it has this awesome mCP store so I don't have to do any configuration I can just click

buttons I love this idea look at that so if you don't have client installed it's just a vs code extension it also works

on cursor and this button is the mCP servers button this is like the app store for AI and idees enables git uh

cool git doesn't sound like I need any kind of keys or anything so here we go this is most seamless way to install an

mCP server here's what's really cool by the way the way client mented this is like ridiculously simple the store is

just if I remember right a configuration of like names and GitHub and then all it does is tell Klein to go and install the

mCP server at this URL and does it that's a pretty Dam cool agentic use case so what it do it broke it down it

created a directory and my documents client MCB which okay is doing the things so it's adding this repo path

okay seems fine so far I mean the cool thing about model context protocol is it's uses servers I saw people complain

oh that's you know blah blah blah has these downsides whatever but the positive side is it's just a standard

interface you know making HTTP calls you could have a backend you know written in anything so it verified that it could

use the server's capabilities before saying it's done that's the super cool thing about agents in general when it

comes to coding is they verify their own stuff you don't have to be the the dungon troll verifying that the stuff

worked it does it for you that part is cool I will say if you've been to like both or lovable let's just go here let's

go to lovable because they have this beautiful Builder integration to import from figma it is awesome you should use

it but anyway if we go on here and say actually I have this sort of like CRM app that I actually imported from figma

and note that it is actually responsive I don't know if you've tried any other fig ports but they're not responsive

this is actually responsive anyway this has the super base integration that is so cool this thing if you connect with

superbase then you can build out applications with full on off and databases and backend and full stack

functionality without leaving The Lovable chat I think that's the promise of mCP is you stay in your cursor chat

your client chat your lovable chat your whatever chat your builder. chat and all the tools you need it can read it can

look at the schemas of your database tables it can create tables it can do anything that it needs as awareness of

things that the AI itself would normally not have awareness create a standard protocol a clean set of inputs and

outputs with schemas and everything that's the dream and that's exciting now the weird thing is you know I've heard

so much hype about mCP and I'm like I'll just stream about mCP and it'll be obvious why I want it and what I want to

use and I'll be honest right now it is so not obious what I want to do or like why I need this let's try to do

something useful so search seems cool give me something useful that's like free let's do Brave search I was always

just curious about this one I'll go get a brave API key if I don't have one already okay here's my key cin oh okay

we've got an mCP server up Pro great don't flash my API ke H the screen please even though I just gave it to a

chat box to some open source thing to some API to whatever cool approved oh yeah let's Auto approve these things

that's fun okay we got some everybody we got okay somebody recommend Brave search perfect let's start a new test we added

Brave mCP server our agent can search the web let's try search the web for what is builder. try this again what is

builder. it's probably G to be wrong too our phone not Cy platform blah blah blah okay cool oh wait is this yeah I did

let's Auto approve these I like their Auto proov so cursor's Auto proof is called YOLO mode fun name terrible idea

for a name in my opinion okay so visual editing designed code Enterprise CMS yeah cool visual AI stuff awesome okay

now let's uses for something so it's actually like uses for something useful so I wonder if it's going to be smart

enough okay let's do this this is a real use case I have from time to time is I just forget stuff so as a side note I

have I mentioned I have the chat GPT app here installed I find the app integration sound awesome but highly

disappointing that's probably why they're not making a big deal of it right now but I have this habit with

chat gbt that I've trained myself to do I just I turn on web search every time no matter what why because chat GPT lies

so damn much like it just lies so much and I can't I cannot be a productive human when I get lied to so much but

like you know if if you got a friend who lies to you one out of every 10 things they say I'm going to have to fact check

them on everything but Lu for us lying friends don't have a search the web button where we can ensure that they

validate all information all the time will it be smart enough to search for things that I need so here's an example

I go to chat gbt I really want to just be sure it searches the web and I know cursor has at web built in and so like

this whole Brave search with a lot of hurdles for nothing cursor just can do at web but it doesn't do at web

automatically from what I understand have I ever seen it just search the web without me telling it to I don't believe

so and so sometimes they looking for something like really recent like here's an example Tailwind 4 let's do how do I

do container queries in Tailwind 4 Tailwind 4 is pretty new it's probably newer than whatever this model is is it

automatically searching the web no it's telling me I have it's fine I'm not hold on let's switch the mode here plan let's

go to plan mode I'm just trying to ask a question it's so funny how it refers to the user okay plan how do I do container

queries in tail in4 I need to it's so funny to see the narration um so it knows how to do

container queries in Tailwind which is Awesome by the way maybe these are non- obvious queries to do a web search let's

try something else I mean obviously I can say what is today's top news stories I'm assuming it's going to do web search

automatically let's see that's cool why did you search twice I don't know now it's big beautiful and green okay now I

mean I guess so sure I guess you could say like add to my homepage today's top news stories

hardcode the list as you can see I'm still reaching for a use case make sense I someone tell me a use case for mCP

that's like really awesome this is doing what I expected it is giving me news stories hardcoded into this application

like great fun any political news especially these days enjoyable great let me use the browser tool to open the

website and see how this news section looks okay yeah great I mean it's ugly but I mean it's not horrible just not my

style that's fine that's great that's cool that's just a cool example of like what what client can do now I'm not

finding it to be smart in just automatically doing web searches unless I'm pretty obvious that I want to web

search Okay chat like we really want to find one MC PR server that's interesting let's go over to what came out of the

box memory sounds kind of interesting let's do memory because memory is not something that cursor has built in

create create relations add observation delete that's cool okay so let's do this one let's try and hook up to cursor

proper memory let's go to cursor and let's do it the cursor way okay mCP add new mCP server great command to run I

don't know I'm already confused what ssse let's go to the docs NP f file uses Json okay great project okay let's do

that cursor mp. Json this is a lot more work than Klein but let's just start there okay

bam okay cursor mCP dojason and I saw some Jason looking stuff over here npx okay sure memory npx cool great okay so

do I I do that okay so I added memory command okay can I just

oh okay so I added the Json and I typed the stuff and I got the stuff great how do I enap command great cool okay I see

so you do the JM thing and does the thing but how do I add this system prompts here's example prompt for

personalization oh I see it's saying this could be a good custom okay cool let's go um cursor rules I cursor rules

mCP MDC is that markdown cursor if you have MDC it gives you this cool little cute little UI with different boxes

helpful for remembering stuff for use later sure okay save that was cool and then all right so let's see if we could

use this my name is Steve I assume it's not going to just oh let me update my memory with

your introduction well it actually did something unexpectedly cool happened that was fun I don't know if this is

going to be useful to me yet but let's just test this out I don't need that what what is my name let me check the

memory wow interesting that maybe cool I mean like I feel like anything that LM needs to remember should really be in

cursor rulle so we're trying to think of a use case on why we want memory but this is cool we have a memory now and it

does do stuff and let's try something really quickly like does memory just auto trigger if I do like let's just

update some code let's do that same prompts y all seen before and like well it just remember stuff I don't know

let's do our prompt again so let's go over here and say write me a function that converts down to HTML so far my

belief is on mCP that most of the stuff you can do manually just fine you know uh oh wait I don't want that

g will it remember this because this is something Devon was supposed to do stop stop um is if you say like here's how I

want something like one thing that Devon did that is cool one time I told it I can't remember what it was I remember

that yeah it was a weather app and it generated some weather app stuff and I was like no I want to use like an eye

style and it's like oh you want iOS down to save that that was pretty cool cuz that is like a human right you tell a

human to feedback we write code a certain way and it may not be documented anywhere especially if your startup goes

so it just saves that like a human it saves that memory so here I'm going to give some feedback and say don't install

any packages I'll maybe be more extreme I don't like using npm packages ever ever

do this without do this from scratch with red jaxes now will it remember that because that's one thing Devon could do

Devon was kind of bad in general but it did this one time it was cool so didn't remember that it would have been cool if

it remembered that if it's automatic be like oh I see you have this preference I will say that yeah yeah the shared

memory does seem interesting in general I wish it would have done that so that's the tough part I still don't see a lot

of good reasons to use mCP over doing things manually here's my guess if you're doing something a lot over and

over in cursor or cin or whatever tool you use and you're constantly copying and pasting from the same Source Google

Drive postest database schema whatever then an mCP server would streamline that workflow it would make it a little bit

less annoying to have to go back to that Source over and over if you are always copy and pasting from jira or slack you

can either create or use a slack or G integration so you don't have to do that manually that part is pretty cool or for

instance like if you are building in a way similar to like lovable and you're always reading the same superbase tables

and working with that creating them Etc you can use an mCP server for that I use cursor a lot every day I use it's built

in a cursor right I use at web if I needed to remember something I put in the cursor rules the nice part about the

cursor rules versus this sort of like mysterious amorphous database is I assume that mysterious morphus database

is unique to me it's on my local computer it's our server running there so it's not shared among the team at

least with cursor rules I I'm clear I know if I saved it in a way that is only to me or I saved it in the repo with the

scoping and so my takeaway so far is MP is cool but it's not something that like if you're not using today every day

you're obviously missing out on that's my sense so far so that's my take so far at least that for me this is not

something that I'm just horribly missing out I will say Klein has the smoothest mCP installation of anything I've ever

seen I obviously you saw me struggle with mCP I'm guessing I'm not the only one despite that some people rage super

hard about it but I get how in theory it's super cool it is I mean you saw I went a little crazy when I saw the

memory thing while it was really really really cool to see I can't still tell you what the use case that makes sense

for it is but that was really exciting to see and while it wasn't I think that's a challenge with tool use in

general is if you have so many tools you know like how is The Ellen supposed to know when to use what and I probably

could have in fact look let's let's try one more thing before i s off here cursor uh rules there we go uh memory

reable memory okay so let's add some more if I if I ever feedback like I like things this way or

that way save that feedback when implementing things look up feedback first this way as I work with you you

can understand my preferences better let's try that really quickly let's see if this let me give some feedback on

this markdown D on obvious critique is don't use so much re exes now I'm going to mess up my mysterious amorphous

database with information I don't know how to go through and Purge later I don't like comments in code remove all

comments in the code um okay it's still not remembering that I did save that rule that says if I give you feedback

save it but didn't remember that it's unfortunate maybe I'll be more explicit let's go back to we had I said right if

I ever give I tell you save this is attached to all files let's show one more here is my feedback please use

Pascal all functions I'm like saying the word feedback this is my feedback I told the rules if I give you feedback and I

said this is my feedback I may have to figure something wrong here so the Big Challenge I always have so there's

there's two challenges here that I think are actually really really pronounced challenge one is this is configuration

based I used to be so hardcore on the config configuration overcode train but configuration is so annoying so many

times I've updated for things and didn't do what I wanted I just don't know there's no feedback there's no errors

there's no Cog I don't know what I'm doing wrong but what what is the next step there isn't one there's just more

guess and check and pray the second thing is we're dealing with an llm which are fundamentally non-deterministic you

know llms are incredibly powerful but like we have this challenge when people do I mean this happened to be a live

stream I did a live stream uh yesterday the day before the L did some stuff it didn't before and that's that happens

with Builder happens with cursor people used to deterministic systems in general right that's what we've been raised on

forever it's one two three it always does the same thing every time and that's that's the big challenges I'm

having here with with the mCP server I'm sure with moral and error you can get some stuff and I know people really

really like this but the configuration the lack of clarity on if the llm like even this this cursor rule as a

configuration like did I do this right is it like is it even reading this I don't know like are you I don't even

know how to check cursor and say like did you look at this cursor rule like maybe I misspell do cursor you know I

don't know a lot of potential here I don't have a killer use case yet I like seeing it I think the hype is overblown

at the moment but the theory here is extremely cool thank you all this was my zero to not quite hero look at mCP

hopefully you find this valuable hopefully if I save you time because this is not really your gem like maybe

it isn't mine today then you've saved a little bit of time if not if you're like hey there's a lot of cool stuff I can do

now that I've kind of seen someone do the setup and stuff I think that hopefully you can find some really cool

stuff you can do with it until next time see you everybody