Pedro Lopez describes Airbyte's context layer and the challenge of giving agents access to many business systems without filling their context with every tool definition. Pedro Lopez demonstrates a thin MCP interfaceModel Context Protocol is a standard way for AI applications to connect with external tools and data sources through consistent interfaces. that discovers capabilities progressively, separating description from execution.
Pedro Lopez examines authenticationApplication authentication verifies the identity of a user or service before granting access to protected application capabilities. and session design, including OAuth interoperability and the difficulty of asking an agent to complete interactive login flows safely. URL-based elicitation and out-of-band authorisation can help, but support varies and sensitive credentials should not be collected through improvised forms.
Pedro Lopez contrasts hosted MCP access with a CLI that accepts structured JSON, supports pipes and filtering, and uses predictable commands without interactive prompts. Neither interface is universally superior: audience, output volume, long-running jobs, versioning and execution control determine which design is appropriate.
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