What are MCP apps and why should you care?
Show notes
Most MCP tools today return text. But what if your agent could render a chart, a form, or a full dashboard right inside the chat? That's what MCP apps do — and they're already live on ChatGPT, Claude, and Amazon Quick. Romain sits down with Luigi Pederzani, co-founder of Manufact (the company behind mcp-use, 10K+ GitHub stars), to explore MCP apps — the first official extension of the MCP protocol that lets servers return interactive UI inside AI chat interfaces. Key takeaways: • What MCP apps are — Standard MCP returns text and actions; MCP apps let a server send back a piece of interface (a form, a chart, a dashboard) that renders right inside the chat. It became the first official extension of the protocol this year, growing out of MCP-UI. • UI drives retention — Amplitude saw 2x retention for users exposed to a chart-rendering MCP app versus text-only responses. UI lets software products stay experiences, not just systems of record. • AI apps are the new browsers — Extending Paul Graham's thesis, every software product will be rendered inside AI chats, pulling data and structure from different sources the way we switch tabs today. • Building with mcp-use — Reuse existing React components with minimal changes; the useMcp hook bridges tool arguments (filled by the agent) into component props. The server stays a normal MCP server, the client is the host, and the view runs in a sandboxed iframe. • Interactivity and safety — Iframes are battle-tested and the model-to-server communication is standardized. UI can send events back to the model, so clicking a chart element can trigger another tool call in the chat. OAuth is now standard for production MCP servers. • Tool design best practices — Don't wrap OpenAPI specs directly as MCP. APIs are granular and atomic; MCP tools should serve a task end-to-end so agents don't get confused on ordering. Limit the number of tools exposed; progressive disclosure is now handled by the major clients. • MCP as the A2A protocol — A2A never really landed, and MCP is becoming the agent-to-agent protocol, with companies embedding an agent as a single tool whose main argument is a prompt. • Getting to production — Start with a plain MCP server, then add UI. Skills are now part of the product, and Manufact focuses on agent-readiness of the SDK, testing across clients, deployment, auth, observability (OTEL), and per-tool analytics. • AWS integration — mcp-use can sit on the server side while AgentCore Gateway sits in front to handle enterprise concerns like auth policies and routing. • What's next — Exposing skills directly from MCP servers (rather than decoupled files), and the next stateless-by-default release of the protocol.With Luigi Pederzani, Co-founder of Manufact