Your MCP Server is Bad (and you should feel bad)
summary
Claim: many MCP servers are just REST wrappers that confuse LLMs, waste tokens, and hurt performance. FastMCP becomes the de facto framework (millions of downloads) and shows practical fixes: hide REST sequencing by exposing outcomes not operations, flatten args with literals/enums, treat errors as prompts, use readonly hints and elicitation, and respect the token budget — aim for roughly 50 tools per agent (GitHub has ~170). SEP‑1686 adds async tasks; pragmatic curation and a single-agent surface improve reliability.
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chapters (27)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:03What is MCP
- 3:52Agentic design basics
- 8:47Discovery for agents
- 10:11Why MCP for agents
- 11:17Bad MCP servers
- 13:23Fixing bad servers
- 15:09Outcomes over operations
- 16:34Agent stories and tools
- 18:39Flatten tool args
- 20:24Structured args and types
- 22:10Document MCP servers
- 24:38Errors as prompts
- 26:23Readonly hints and permissions
- 27:27Token budget respect
- 31:13Progressive disclosure
- 34:23Curate tools and design
- 38:11Five MCP best practices
- 39:58Avoid REST to MCP
- 41:22Curate ruthlessly
- 42:24MCP as UI
- 43:50Documentation and control
- 46:17Async tasks SEP 1686
- 48:27Elicitation patterns
- 50:32When MCP servers are necessary for agents
- 52:17Code mode optimization
- 53:45Q&A
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