Model Context Protocol (MCP) Best Practices

As we integrate services and data APIs into agentic AI solutions, interest is growing in how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can standardize the way tools expose their capabilities to agents. With that in mind, I’ve assembled—yes, with the help of AI—a survey of key topics and resources related to MCP. MCP is an open standard (launched by Anthropic in Nov 2024) for exposing data sources, tools, and “resources” to AI agents via a uniform interface. It is designed to replace the ad-hoc “one-off connector per tool/agent” pattern, simplifying how LLM-based agents integrate with live systems. [1] ...

September 29, 2025 · 8 min · Michael OShea

Experimenting with Agentic AI Tooling: My Journey Through the Cutting Edge

The first time I fired up an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server plugin, “Agent,” I was excited to see it registered in Claude Desktop but immediately annoyed by the errors that popped up. I didn’t expect a smooth experience in my encounter with the future of Agentic AI, but I found many configuration tweaks, clunky debugging tools, and broken dependencies along the way. It was a stark reminder that we’re in the early days, and there’s a lot of ground to cover before Agents become seamless collaborators. ...

December 30, 2024 · 3 min · Michael OShea