Episode Sponsor: Den is a member of the MCP Steering Committee and a Core Maintainer focusing on auth and security. He explains how MCP acts as a universal bridge, providing AI models with the real-time context they need. He shares insights on working with MCP Apps and moving beyond simple text to render web-based user interfaces directly in your chat window.
If you've used an AI coding assistant before, you've probably experienced vibe coding. You start with an idea, throw a high-level prompt at the AI, and wait to see what comes out. Sometimes it's close. Sometimes it's completely off. Either way, it often takes several rounds of tweaking to get what you actually want. That endless loop of prompting, generating, and fixing can get frustrating fast.
Microsoft and GitHub have made AI assistance a key part of their software development tools. Embedded in the latest Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code releases, GitHub Copilot puts a multifaceted pair programmer-combining AI-powered code completion, coding agents, and various Model Context Protocol servers-right inside your editor. The resulting tool kit is especially useful as part of a well-designed application development life cycle. Outside of good software engineering practices, however, it's easy to let vibe coding run away with itself, adding features that aren't needed and making code overly complex.