The Missing Protocol: How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams

The Missing Protocol How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams Viktor Gamov Principal Developer Advocate, Confluent https://linkedin.com/in/vikgamov @gamussa

What LLMs do X/Bluesky: @gamussa

What LLMs do X/Bluesky: @gamussa

What LLMs don t do ❌ Know your data ❌ Take any action ’ X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Adding Your Data X/Bluesky: @gamussa

The first pass: RAG X/Bluesky: @gamussa

RAG: old and busted? ✅ It works just fine 🟡 Batch Oriented ❌ MCP competes with it X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Doing things X/Bluesky: @gamussa

What makes an Agent? ✅ small program ✅ calls an LLM ✅ takes action X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Isn t that just a microservice? ’ X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Calling External Tools X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Agents at Scale are Complex Systems They don t exist in isolation, they have many dependencies ’ X/Bluesky: @gamussa

The problem with rolling your own ❌ Tool integrations ❌ Resource integrations ❌ Discoverability X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Model Context Protocol in a nutshell X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Model Context Protocol MCP Server MCP Client X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Model Context Protocol MCP Host MCP Server MCP Client X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Model Context Protocol - Host MCP Host • Microservice • Claude Desktop, etc. MCP Client • May contain multiple clients X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Model Context Protocol MCP Host MCP Client Request Response X/Bluesky: @gamussa MCP Server

Model Context Protocol MCP Host Request MCP Client Response Async X/Bluesky: @gamussa MCP Server

Model Context Protocol MCP Host MCP Client MCP Client Request Response Request Response X/Bluesky: @gamussa MCP Server (calendaring) MCP Server (geospatial search)

Agents with MCP MCP Server Calendar API (calendaring) Request «book me a restaurant for tomorrow» Agentic Microservice MCP Server (geospatial) X/Bluesky: @gamussa Google Maps API

Discovery (rando?) (tools? prompts? resources? • Each resource has a description. These can be aggregated into the prompt. X/Bluesky: @gamussa ) Agentic Microservice MCP Server • Agent exposes /capabilities

Discovery Agentic Microservice MCP Server (rando?) “Set up coffee with me and Neal. • Agent exposes /capabilities (tools? prompts? resources? • Each resource has a description. These can be aggregated into the prompt. ” ) X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Discovery Agentic Microservice • Agent exposes /capabilities MCP Server (tools? prompts? resources? (rando?) • Each resource has a description. “Set up coffee with me and Dom. You are a helpful scheduling agent with access to (upon request): * A geospatial API that can find meeting places near a location in a given price range and meeting style * Complete access to my calendar These can be aggregated into the prompt. ” ) X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Discovery Agentic Microservice • Agent exposes /capabilities MCP Server (tools? prompts? resources? (rando?) • Each resource has a description. “Set up coffee with me and Neal. You are a helpful scheduling agent with access to (upon request): * A geospatial API that can find meeting places near a location in a given price range and meeting style * Complete access to my calendar These can be aggregated into the prompt. • Each tool has a description and a schema. Common foundation model APIs directly support tool descriptions. ” ) X/Bluesky: @gamussa

Discovery Agentic Microservice MCP Server (rando?) Q What do you, as the microservice author, need to enable this? A: a URL : X/Bluesky: @gamussa

What MCP gives you ✅ Context Management ✅ Tool invocation ✅ Discovery ✅ Composition X/Bluesky: @gamussa

When not to use MCP ❌ When it s all internal ’ X/Bluesky: @gamussa

When to write agents in the first place ✅ Natural language input ✅ Probabilistic results ❌ LinkedInfluencer said so X/Bluesky: @gamussa

How agents will evolve MCP Server MCP Server Enhanced Prompt Agentic Microservice User Prompt Response Legacy Data X/Bluesky: @gamussa LLM

Multi-agent architecture A2A Request Agentic Microservice Response ) X/Bluesky: @gamussa ( User Prompt Agentic Microservice

Multi-agent architecture (streaming) MCP Server User Prompt Agentic Microservice MCP Server Agentic Microservice X/Bluesky: @gamussa

As always, Have a Nice Day… X/Bluesky: @gamussa http://speaking.gamov.io