WEBVTT 00:00.160 --> 00:03.040 And at last, the epic week has arrived. 00:03.080 --> 00:07.480 Welcome to day one of week six, the pinnacle of this course. 00:07.480 --> 00:08.280 You've made it. 00:08.320 --> 00:09.640 Congratulations. 00:09.800 --> 00:10.760 Let's get going. 00:11.120 --> 00:13.920 And as you well know, two things are happening to us this week. 00:13.920 --> 00:20.360 We are, first of all, first and foremost introducing the Model Context protocol from anthropic. 00:20.520 --> 00:26.800 And secondly, we are returning to my very favorite, the OpenAI agents SDK. 00:27.120 --> 00:32.440 Now that we've completed our grand tour of frameworks, it is back and never has there been a better 00:32.440 --> 00:32.960 time. 00:33.320 --> 00:38.760 And as a quick refresher on the different frameworks that we've explored, we started with no framework 00:38.760 --> 00:39.280 at all. 00:39.440 --> 00:42.440 We then looked at OpenAI agents SDK. 00:42.800 --> 00:49.120 Then we moved to Crewe, which was similar but but somewhat more opinionated and had a lot more construct 00:49.120 --> 00:49.880 built on top. 00:49.880 --> 00:54.880 But it had that great YAML ability to separate out our prompts from what we worked on. 00:55.120 --> 00:58.960 Then we moved to Landgraff, which was the week that caught me off guard and that I fell in love with 00:58.960 --> 01:00.160 Landgraff during the week. 01:00.160 --> 01:02.490 And we built the great A sidekick. 01:02.730 --> 01:10.090 And then last week we got to Autogen a much more experimental, interesting out there week when we looked 01:10.090 --> 01:17.650 at at Autogen Agents Chat and also at Autogen core, culminating in the creator project at the end and 01:17.690 --> 01:18.570 out there project. 01:18.610 --> 01:22.370 A lot of fun, really interesting, which I hope you enjoyed too. 01:22.410 --> 01:29.090 But now we are highlighting the box on the bottom right, the model Context protocol from anthropic. 01:29.130 --> 01:30.410 What's it all about? 01:30.450 --> 01:33.650 But first I have a word to have with you. 01:33.770 --> 01:40.930 I do believe I do suspect that a few people will be joining right now who have jumped, who have been 01:41.130 --> 01:45.530 daring enough to jump straight from the beginning of the course all the way to now, because I think 01:45.530 --> 01:47.210 this is the juicy part. 01:47.250 --> 01:51.010 This is where all of the excitement lies, which is fair enough. 01:51.050 --> 01:52.410 It's a free world and all that. 01:52.410 --> 01:54.890 You are autonomous, just like our agents. 01:54.890 --> 01:56.690 But I just want to put on a quick point there. 01:56.690 --> 02:00.290 And for those that have been along for the whole ride, you will be agreeing with me on this. 02:00.290 --> 02:03.010 There's a lot to love about what we've covered. 02:03.210 --> 02:09.540 Uh, if I realize that you are impatient to get to the topic of the day. 02:09.580 --> 02:10.260 MCP. 02:10.500 --> 02:17.380 But bear in mind, in the first week we go through and we natively work with APIs and tools, and if 02:17.380 --> 02:22.460 that's not something that you're comfortable with, it's really important to have that foundation as 02:22.460 --> 02:25.420 we go into understanding the ins and outs of MCP. 02:25.820 --> 02:30.020 And then secondly, in week two, we go into the OpenAI agents SDK. 02:30.060 --> 02:32.300 And that is what we'll be using again this week. 02:32.540 --> 02:37.260 So even if you're going to skip weeks three through to five, then fair enough. 02:37.260 --> 02:39.940 But I do think that one and two are worth looking at. 02:39.980 --> 02:44.620 Even if you look at them quickly, speed me up and have me rattle off through it so you get that sense 02:44.620 --> 02:44.940 of it. 02:44.940 --> 02:48.940 And if you already know about APIs and tools, then you could just jump straight to week two. 02:48.980 --> 02:50.540 But I do suggest you give that a try. 02:50.580 --> 02:54.060 But you know you can keep going if you if you insist. 02:54.380 --> 02:54.700 All right. 02:54.700 --> 02:59.020 And for those that have been all the way, all the way through it, you know well how much fun we've 02:59.020 --> 03:03.220 had at the projects we've built and why it's worth it leading up to this moment. 03:03.220 --> 03:06.270 And so for those still with us, we. 03:06.310 --> 03:12.350 Now it is time to introduce the Model Context protocol. 03:12.590 --> 03:13.750 Let's do this. 03:13.950 --> 03:16.950 And first of all, I do believe that it's important. 03:16.950 --> 03:22.470 And explaining what MCP is to start by telling you a few things that it is not. 03:22.750 --> 03:25.670 So first of all, it's not an agent framework. 03:25.670 --> 03:26.830 It's not like the other things. 03:26.830 --> 03:27.950 It's not like crew. 03:28.070 --> 03:33.550 It's not like OpenAI agents SDK, because in fact, we're going to be using OpenAI agents SDK with it. 03:33.830 --> 03:37.030 And last week we used Autogen with it as a teaser. 03:37.030 --> 03:42.750 So so as you know, it is it is something that sits alongside agent frameworks, but it's not one itself, 03:43.030 --> 03:46.550 and it's not some fundamental change to the way we do things. 03:46.550 --> 03:51.950 It's sort of building on stuff that already happens, and it's very much a sort of native approach to 03:51.990 --> 03:52.430 things. 03:52.430 --> 03:55.510 But but it's no no real fundamental changes here. 03:55.510 --> 03:57.470 And it's not a way to build agents. 03:57.470 --> 04:01.710 There's no amount of coding agents that happens with MCP. 04:02.430 --> 04:03.310 So what is it? 04:03.430 --> 04:05.830 Well, it's a protocol. 04:05.830 --> 04:07.240 It's a standard. 04:07.240 --> 04:13.400 It's it's just a way of doing things, an approach and then an implementation to help you adhere to 04:13.440 --> 04:15.760 that approach to that standard very easily. 04:16.240 --> 04:23.800 It's a simple way to integrate things, to integrate stuff that an agent needs with an agent. 04:23.920 --> 04:30.960 So, uh, and that really comes into three categories tools and resources, which means context, the 04:30.960 --> 04:36.040 kind of stuff you get from rag and prompts like templates of different kinds of prompts. 04:36.400 --> 04:40.800 And out of those three, uh, it really comes in that order in terms of how much people are excited 04:40.800 --> 04:43.040 and talk about this tools is the number one. 04:43.040 --> 04:46.440 That is the thing that people are really falling off their seats about. 04:46.440 --> 04:48.720 The fact that you can integrate tools really easily. 04:48.720 --> 04:55.640 Resources is kind of cool and has meant that it's easier to hook up, uh, different LMS to resources, 04:55.640 --> 04:58.440 to suppliers of context and then prompts. 04:58.680 --> 05:03.680 Uh, I haven't seen that take off in such a big way, but but I'm sure that there are people taking 05:03.680 --> 05:04.600 advantage of it. 05:04.600 --> 05:05.720 But that's the way to think of it. 05:05.720 --> 05:13.610 And tools is really where everyone begins on their MCP journey and the way that anthropic themselves 05:13.610 --> 05:14.290 describe it. 05:14.330 --> 05:21.930 As they say, it's like thinking of of MCP as like a USB-C port for AI applications, which is why I 05:21.930 --> 05:24.010 had that cute picture on the prior slide. 05:24.050 --> 05:25.610 It's like a connector. 05:25.610 --> 05:31.290 It's like the connecting fabric, but it's like the one universal port that has been come up with this 05:31.290 --> 05:32.290 one standard. 05:32.290 --> 05:36.650 That means that all of these different peripherals can can be connected into each other for all sorts 05:36.650 --> 05:41.330 of different purposes, without requiring lots of different cables and agreements and so on. 05:41.330 --> 05:44.690 So that that is how anthropic themselves frame MCP. 05:44.690 --> 05:48.490 And I've seen a lot of people since describe it that way as well. 05:48.530 --> 05:48.810 Okay. 05:48.850 --> 05:50.850 So that's what it is and what it's not. 05:50.890 --> 05:53.690 And now one more of these kinds of slides. 05:53.690 --> 05:57.330 This is some reasons not to be excited by it. 05:57.330 --> 06:00.250 So one reason is look it's just a standard. 06:00.290 --> 06:02.250 It's it's like a, it's a, it's a protocol. 06:02.250 --> 06:04.970 It's a spec with some implementation stuff. 06:04.970 --> 06:06.930 It's not actually the tools. 06:06.930 --> 06:12.980 Not only is it not building an agent, but this doesn't actually contain tools in it either. 06:12.980 --> 06:14.300 It's just the standard. 06:14.300 --> 06:16.340 That's that's all that MCP is. 06:17.220 --> 06:20.260 And Lang Chain already has a tools ecosystem. 06:20.260 --> 06:21.740 We've seen that ourselves. 06:21.740 --> 06:24.660 We've seen that Lang Chain has a thriving community. 06:24.820 --> 06:28.940 Lang chain has a ton of tools, as do many of the other frameworks, by the way. 06:28.940 --> 06:34.340 But Lang Chain is perhaps I'd say one of the most popular, the most popular. 06:34.500 --> 06:41.580 And it, uh, it you see that that in platforms like Autogen, you can actually bring in lang chain 06:41.620 --> 06:42.260 tools. 06:42.380 --> 06:47.020 And so there's, so in Landgraaf and in Autogen you can use lang chain tools. 06:47.020 --> 06:49.380 And so it makes it so easy to use them. 06:49.380 --> 06:55.740 So there already is an existing community around tool building with a with a common interface. 06:55.740 --> 06:59.340 So it's not like MCP is, is that that much bigger. 06:59.700 --> 07:06.980 Um, and let's be honest, you can already turn any function into a tool, even if you don't want to 07:07.020 --> 07:11.710 use things like the sort of decorator helpers that you get with some of these frameworks. 07:11.710 --> 07:15.430 You can just write the JSON yourself, like like we do in the first week. 07:15.430 --> 07:19.790 So you can take any function, whether it's something running locally, whether it's something that 07:19.790 --> 07:20.910 runs in the cloud. 07:20.910 --> 07:25.870 If you want to have a tool that can read Google Maps, then you just write some code that reads Google 07:25.870 --> 07:30.510 Maps and you wrap it in a tool if you want something that accesses the local file system. 07:30.550 --> 07:31.670 Same thing applies. 07:32.070 --> 07:34.310 It's just, you know, you can turn any function into a tool. 07:34.310 --> 07:35.430 So what's the big deal? 07:35.750 --> 07:37.350 What's so special about MCP? 07:37.630 --> 07:39.870 Well, you know very well that I love MCP. 07:39.870 --> 07:41.270 And I'm very excited about this week. 07:41.270 --> 07:43.830 So you know that this is all leading to the positives. 07:44.150 --> 07:45.910 But I do want to clarify what it's not. 07:45.910 --> 07:46.790 And this is what it is. 07:46.790 --> 07:48.790 Reasons to be excited about it. 07:48.790 --> 07:55.190 So first of all, sure you can integrate with things like Lang Chain if you're on Lang Chain or if you're 07:55.190 --> 07:56.910 an Autogen, then you use the wrapper. 07:57.310 --> 08:02.870 And sure, you can write your own tools if you write all of that JSON, but there's friction there, 08:02.910 --> 08:06.670 there's stuff, and you have to be in that ecosystem or using that JSON. 08:06.670 --> 08:12.400 And if you write the tool yourself to go to Google Maps, then you have to know how to describe it and 08:12.400 --> 08:13.720 what the parameters are. 08:13.760 --> 08:16.160 So there's kind of friction to doing all of this. 08:16.400 --> 08:24.200 And MCP is a nice, clean, simple, native way of doing it without without much gumph, without much 08:24.200 --> 08:26.240 stuff in the way or concepts to learn. 08:26.680 --> 08:28.520 There's a couple of concepts, but that's it. 08:28.560 --> 08:30.040 And once you've learned them, you're done. 08:30.080 --> 08:35.760 And so it makes it kind of frictionless, kind of seamless just to be pulling in new tools. 08:35.760 --> 08:37.360 You want some some new tools. 08:37.360 --> 08:40.000 You look them up, you just pull them in with MCP and that's it. 08:41.400 --> 08:43.920 Like Lang chain only much more. 08:43.960 --> 08:47.320 Only not locked into the Lang chain ecosystem or needing their wrappers. 08:47.360 --> 08:50.080 Just across everything, across anything. 08:50.280 --> 08:53.880 It is frictionless and it is becoming ubiquitous. 08:54.600 --> 08:58.200 And on that note, it's obviously really taking off. 08:58.240 --> 09:02.080 It's got enormous adoption exploding ecosystem. 09:02.240 --> 09:05.880 And that in of itself is a huge benefit. 09:05.880 --> 09:07.560 It's like a positive feedback loop. 09:07.800 --> 09:13.530 The fact that it's doing so well and that so many people are adopting it makes it all the more valuable. 09:13.650 --> 09:17.250 It's a network effect would be the, uh, the start up term for it. 09:17.290 --> 09:21.010 And, uh, that that's one of the reasons why it's so attractive. 09:21.050 --> 09:26.490 Because as you will see, when we look at MCP marketplaces, there are just tons of tools out there. 09:26.570 --> 09:31.570 We're thinking of writing some code to look at Google Maps to, to pull in the maps and have that be 09:31.570 --> 09:34.170 a tool in your in your product, in your AI app. 09:34.210 --> 09:36.290 Well guess what, there's an MCP tool for that. 09:36.290 --> 09:39.130 There's an MC tool for almost anything you can think of. 09:39.170 --> 09:40.290 There's so many of them. 09:40.290 --> 09:43.770 So that is in of itself a huge positive. 09:44.130 --> 09:45.410 And then you know, okay. 09:45.450 --> 09:47.210 So it's just a standard. 09:47.210 --> 09:51.210 But I mean honestly HTML was just a standard. 09:51.210 --> 09:52.330 And look where that got us. 09:52.410 --> 09:55.050 So standards can be very powerful things. 09:55.050 --> 10:03.250 Having a shared mindset around a common standard that people all buy into, that in of itself is a huge 10:03.250 --> 10:04.050 achievement. 10:04.050 --> 10:11.130 And with a player like anthropic building it and backing it and promoting it, it's got a lot of momentum. 10:11.330 --> 10:15.570 Uh, and so that, that that is the reason that it's so exciting.