How should we design tools and services for AI agents? Should we keep baking custom APIs, or is there a better way? This session introduces the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a new open protocol that enables AI agents to discover and call external tools in a secure, structured way.

We’ll cover the basics of MCP (host/client/server roles, lifecycle, standard I/O vs. HTTP), compare it to existing agent tool APIs (LangChain, OpenAI tool format), and argue for why an open protocol is necessary to avoid fragmentation in the AI ecosystem. Using real-world examples, we’ll discuss how to convert an existing CLI tool or API into an MCP service and how to expose it safely through Wasm runtimes or serverless functions.

Speakers:

Miley is a Developer Advocate with a passion for empowering developers to build and contribute to open source. She is the co-chair and keynote speaker for KubeCon+Open Source Summit and AI Dev China 2024. With over 5 years of experience working on WasmEdge runtime in CNCF sandbox as the founding member, she talks at KubeCon, KCD Shenzhen, CloudDay Italy, DevRelCon, Open Source Summit Japan, AWS User Group, Global AI Note, KubeDay Singapore etc. Miley writes tech content and organizes dev events, including KCD Shenzhen, OpenSource Fairs, WebAssembly & Rust Meetups in Taipei, Singapore, China, etc.