Generative UI: The AI agent is the front end

"The old way involved writing back ends that provide APIs to do things and writing user interfaces that allow humans to easily take action on those APIs. The new idea is that we'll provide MCP definitions that allow agents to take actions on the back end, while the front end becomes a set of definitions (like Zod schemas) that expose these capabilities."

"You've seen so many things arise and promise the moon. Sometimes they crash and burn. Sometimes they become important. If they are useful, they are absorbed into the developer's toolkit. This skepticism isn't even a conscious thing anymore; it's an instinctual reaction. When someone tells me that AI is going to produce user interfaces on the fly as needed, I immediately begin raising objections. Like performance and accuracy."

Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs enable agent-driven architectures where chat interfaces act as front ends by generating UI controls on demand. Generative UI combines bespoke, as-needed interactive components with agentic MCP APIs to increase personalization beyond historic portal concepts. Traditional development required separate back ends exposing APIs and user interfaces for humans; the new approach defines MCP schemas so agents perform backend actions while front ends present definitions (like Zod schemas) to expose capabilities. Skepticism remains about performance and accuracy, but agentic IDEs and managed environments show promise for rapid prototyping and evolution.

Read at InfoWorld