WEBVTT 00:00.320 --> 00:01.000 All right. 00:01.040 --> 00:11.120 MCP servers are simply wrappers or interfaces that federate access to various systems and tools, making 00:11.120 --> 00:15.480 them accessible to AI applications in a standardized way. 00:15.680 --> 00:21.160 And they do this by exposing functionality through three primary interfaces. 00:21.600 --> 00:27.560 The first one is tools, so model controlled functions that the AI can invoke when needed. 00:27.680 --> 00:33.160 So we saw the example of the weather tool get weather, get forecast get alerts. 00:33.440 --> 00:35.800 And they all boil down to functions. 00:36.000 --> 00:41.600 So we can expose any functionality that we want because we can implement in that function everything 00:41.600 --> 00:47.120 we want from reading data, from writing data to other systems. 00:47.120 --> 00:51.200 We can do everything we want in the tools we have total freedom. 00:51.720 --> 00:59.910 So the AI system and here we saw cursor and we saw cloud desktop or any other application it can decide 00:59.910 --> 01:03.150 when to use those tools based on the context. 01:03.590 --> 01:08.070 The second thing that MCP servers can expose are resources. 01:08.270 --> 01:14.670 And resources are application controlled data that is exposed to the AI system. 01:14.990 --> 01:24.230 So it can be static data like PDF documents, like text files, images, jsons whatever format you want. 01:24.470 --> 01:26.550 But it can also be dynamic. 01:26.550 --> 01:31.870 So you simply tell how to get those resources dynamically, and they don't have to be static. 01:32.190 --> 01:38.510 And we'll see an example in the next couple of videos of static resources and dynamic resources. 01:38.950 --> 01:39.510 All right. 01:39.510 --> 01:43.870 And the last functionality that MCP servers expose can be prompts. 01:44.190 --> 01:51.910 It prompts are user controlled templates for common interactions, and they are predefined templates 01:51.910 --> 01:54.070 that the users can invoke. 01:54.390 --> 01:56.860 This usually helps to standardize rise. 01:56.860 --> 01:58.420 Complex interactions. 01:58.660 --> 02:05.540 Now I know the resources and prompts may not be very clear right now, but I promise you, once we see 02:05.580 --> 02:10.580 examples of them and this is really going to happen in the next couple of videos, will understand that 02:10.580 --> 02:13.620 this is very intuitive and actually very elegant. 02:14.140 --> 02:14.460 All right. 02:14.460 --> 02:18.300 Let's talk about building NCP servers and what options do we have. 02:18.900 --> 02:22.660 So first of all we can manually create an NCP server. 02:22.660 --> 02:28.780 And this would involve us to write maybe a couple of hundred of Python code or Node.js code. 02:29.460 --> 02:34.300 Second, we can also use AI to generate NCP servers. 02:34.300 --> 02:36.460 And we'll actually do this in the course. 02:36.660 --> 02:41.580 So tools like cursor or NCP generator are going to help us do this. 02:42.300 --> 02:46.020 And we can also use community built NCP servers. 02:46.020 --> 02:52.060 And right now there are thousands of community built servers which are open source, which we can clone 02:52.060 --> 02:54.540 and we can modify if we want to. 02:54.740 --> 02:59.340 And right now we saw an example of the weather tool weather map server. 02:59.340 --> 03:02.620 And if you want we can edit it because we have the source code. 03:03.220 --> 03:09.380 And lastly, there are official integrations from companies like Cloudflare like stripe which maintain 03:09.380 --> 03:10.820 their NTP servers. 03:10.820 --> 03:17.620 And I think this is very similar to link chain where each vendor or vector store vendor maintain their 03:17.620 --> 03:19.020 own link chain packages. 03:19.020 --> 03:24.220 For example, we have a link chain package for link chain, open link chain, Google vertex AI, link 03:24.220 --> 03:29.620 chain, anthropic or link chain, pinecone link chain, chrome, ADB, etc.. 03:29.620 --> 03:36.100 So the same thing is going to be with NCP servers, where each company which have a product that they 03:36.100 --> 03:41.740 want to expose and they want other people to use, they will maintain the MCP server. 03:41.740 --> 03:43.700 So and they also open source it. 03:43.700 --> 03:49.140 And this also gives the motivation to do this because it will increase usage of their product. 03:49.300 --> 03:53.730 So for example when stripe is going to expose an MCP server and it maintains it. 03:53.770 --> 03:57.330 It actually increases the usage of their product. 03:57.370 --> 04:02.890 So the companies really have incentives to maintain and to write really good MCP servers. 04:06.370 --> 04:10.610 And this brings me into a very important point I want to address. 04:11.050 --> 04:13.090 Do not reinvent the wheel. 04:13.490 --> 04:20.090 So in case we need to implement an MCP server with functionality of a third party service, we should 04:20.130 --> 04:24.450 first check what kind of MCP servers the third party has implemented. 04:24.650 --> 04:28.050 Most chances that they did implement an MCP server. 04:28.210 --> 04:30.930 We can use or we can borrow functionality. 04:31.050 --> 04:32.490 For example stripe. 04:32.610 --> 04:37.770 I do not need to reinvent the wheel and to implement my own stripe integration, because the stripe 04:37.810 --> 04:40.450 team has already made a pre-built MCP server. 04:40.450 --> 04:45.650 And I'm telling you this so you won't be in a rabbit hole of implementing a bunch of MCP servers that 04:45.650 --> 04:47.850 somebody else has already implemented. 04:48.170 --> 04:53.680 And if there is a feature that is missing, I think it's a good idea that you would contact that third 04:53.680 --> 04:58.160 party, for example, stripe, to see if they have it on their roadmap to implement the feature that 04:58.160 --> 04:58.720 you want. 04:58.760 --> 05:02.000 Or maybe they can implement something custom made for you. 05:03.720 --> 05:06.240 So how MCP servers can be ran. 05:06.720 --> 05:12.240 So first of all, they can be run locally via the standard input output channel. 05:12.240 --> 05:17.520 And we saw this earlier in the course when we ran locally the weather server. 05:18.040 --> 05:23.320 But they can also run remotely via server sent events or SSH. 05:23.440 --> 05:26.240 And we'll also see in the course an example for that. 05:26.480 --> 05:29.720 And they can also run as Docker containers. 05:29.720 --> 05:31.360 And I might show this in the course. 05:31.360 --> 05:33.840 Please let me know if you want this kind of content. 05:34.040 --> 05:40.560 All right I want to talk about a final functionality that MCP servers offer us to implement. 05:40.560 --> 05:41.760 And this is sampling. 05:42.000 --> 05:50.030 And this actually allows the MCP server to request the host AI system, let's say cursor or cloud desktop 05:50.270 --> 05:54.190 to generate a completion given to a kind of prompt. 05:54.510 --> 05:56.470 And this is really powerful. 05:56.470 --> 06:02.030 And this really opens the door for a lot of functionality, but also has some security implications 06:02.030 --> 06:04.070 and privacy implications. 06:04.070 --> 06:07.310 And we'll cover it in depth in the rest of the course. 06:07.990 --> 06:11.590 And I want to touch the topic of composability. 06:11.870 --> 06:17.710 So any application or agent can be both an MVP client and server. 06:18.150 --> 06:24.070 And this really enables us to have this kind of multi-layered agentic application that allows us to 06:24.110 --> 06:27.910 have specialized agents that focus on particular tasks. 06:29.630 --> 06:30.110 All right. 06:30.110 --> 06:31.870 Let's talk a bit about the future. 06:32.150 --> 06:35.630 And the MCP ecosystem is evolving rapidly. 06:35.630 --> 06:39.390 And there are a lot of cool developments that are going to come out soon. 06:39.830 --> 06:43.070 So first of all, let's talk about registry and discovery. 06:43.390 --> 06:48.790 And there will be a central registry API for discovering MCP servers. 06:48.790 --> 06:50.070 So this is really cool. 06:50.070 --> 06:54.510 And you can list your MCP server that you implement and let other people use it. 06:54.950 --> 06:58.670 Another thing, we can have verification of official servers. 06:58.670 --> 07:05.350 So because everybody can implement an MCP server and put it on GitHub, this really opens the door for 07:05.350 --> 07:06.550 a supply chain attack. 07:06.790 --> 07:14.510 So a malicious user can upload an MCP server calling it stripe MCP server, and actually put their malicious 07:14.510 --> 07:18.990 code that will steal your data or even run malicious code on your computer. 07:19.350 --> 07:25.590 So if we have verification of official MCP servers, this really helps mitigate this issue. 07:25.750 --> 07:32.550 And I think in the future we'll have self-evolving agents that can discover new capabilities in runtime. 07:32.750 --> 07:34.270 This is very cool in my opinion. 07:34.630 --> 07:37.110 And let's talk even more about the future. 07:37.110 --> 07:44.950 And I tweeted a while ago saying that website will expose their functionality and their content to agents. 07:44.950 --> 07:52.940 So just like we have a robot.txt that helps search engines to index the website, then web applications 07:52.940 --> 07:59.740 are going to help agents discover them and are going to help the agents navigate through their applications. 07:59.980 --> 08:02.660 So this is what will be in the future. 08:02.660 --> 08:04.820 And we'll have well known endpoints. 08:05.020 --> 08:14.580 And this is a standard endpoint like a well known JSON for websites to expose their capabilities so 08:14.900 --> 08:17.300 they can be used by MCP clients. 08:17.700 --> 08:22.180 And we're going to see in the near future also support for authentication. 08:22.180 --> 08:30.180 So support for protocols like OAuth 2.0 for secure access of external systems and also session tokens 08:30.180 --> 08:31.820 for maintaining connections. 08:31.980 --> 08:38.180 And really, we can really enhance the security of the MCP protocol by integrating this. 08:38.380 --> 08:42.660 And once this will be implemented I will be diving deep into this topic.