External Processing, Internal Leverage: MCP Tool Calls...
Talkat EnvoyCon Europe 2026 · on Wednesday, 2026-03-25· at 11:29· Hall 1-5 | Tram Zone | Cloud Native Theater·
summary
ING runs an Envoy external processing external processor that translates MCP JSON‑RPC tool calls into HTTP calls against existing OpenAPI endpoints, handling headers, bodies, and direct responses over a gRPC bidirectional stream. It serves AI agents across a mesh of ~2,000 services owned by hundreds of teams, keeps MCP thin with 1:1 mapping from tool calls to REST, forwards traceparent for OpenTelemetry spans, yields built‑in ext_proc stats and access logs, and is running in production with plans to open‑source the implementation.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00AI agent enablement with Envoy
- 1:04ING chose Envoy for AI agents
- 2:50Model Context Protocol and MCP servers
- 4:35External processing fits ING’s needs
- 5:58External processing in Envoy
- 8:06MCP tool calls to HTTP endpoints
- 10:14Envoy for MCP transformations
- 11:40Observability with external processing
- 12:44Benefits of external processing
- 13:47OpenAPI MCP proxy open sourced
- 14:30Key takeaways and future outlook
- 15:12Q&A: Use case triggers and autonomy
- 16:58Q&A: Service mapping and governance
- 18:23Q&A: Dynamic tool discovery limits
- 19:27Q&A: OpenAPI schema feedback
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