Decoding model context protocol

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Welcome back, Superhuman. MCP fever took the industry by storm last week. Some believe the little-known tool could make agents 100x more powerful. But is it really all it’s cracked up to be — or just another “buzzword that will expire in a few weeks?”

Today’s Insights

• Meta readies Llama 4, Microsoft ditches OpenAI, and the key to AGI

• Unpacking model context protocol

• Tutorial: How to use AI agents to generate a winning product launch plan

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• News, memes, what’s trending on socials, and more

TODAY IN AI

1. Meta reveals new details about Llama 4: The open-source frontier model, set to come out in a few weeks, could carve out a unique niche by fusing voice and agents together. Instead of having to type out complicated prompts, you’d be able to have a conversation with Llama and tell it exactly how you want something done. That feature, plus the fact that it’s already built into WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, could be enough to bring “hundreds of millions” more businesses into the fold.

2. Microsoft’s new model family could beat OpenAI: The tech giant just finished training a new LLM called MAI, which supposedly performs about as well as OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest offerings. There’s a reasoning spin-off in the works, too. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant might soon run on DeepSeek, xAI, and Meta’s models, instead of OpenAI’s. Tensions between the once-close partners have been bubbling up for months, partly because Microsoft says OpenAI is being too stingy with its models’ technical specs.

3. Hugging Face co-founder slams Anthropic’s ‘AGI by 2027’ theory: Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf is pushing back on Dario Amodei’s AGI predictions. He thinks that while LLMs will be able to help with practical tasks within the next few years, we shouldn’t expect them to make scientific discoveries anytime soon. For that to happen, we first need benchmarks that reward LLMs “who see and question what everyone else missed” — instead of just being “scaled-up good students.”

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FROM THE FRONTIER

Why everyone’s talking about ‘MCP’ all of a sudden

It’s the AI acronym sweeping the nation: MCP, or model context protocol, has been flooding social media over the past week or two.

But what is it really? It’s a special set of instructions created by Claude-maker Anthropic that helps LLMs interact with third-party apps. It was released back in November, but the tool is just now picking up steam as programmers realize how powerful it is.

What problem is it trying to solve? If you want an LLM to review your Slack messages, analyze a chart in Google Sheets, or summarize a YouTube video, you’re going to immediately run into a problem. Most models don’t know how to interact with third-party apps out of the box. It’s like they’re speaking two different languages.

How does MCP help? It acts as a universal translator, meaning you no longer need to code unique integrations for each and every app you want to work with. Computer scientist Santiago Valdarrama thinks it could make agents “100x more powerful.”

How do I actually use it? You can build your own MCP server, which essentially acts as a go-between for different apps and LLMs. Here’s a helpful, 10-minute tutorial if you want all the details. Or, if you’re in a rush, try this three-minute alternative.

But not everyone’s convinced: Software dev Theo Brown says he’s run into major bugs every time he’s tried using it. Also, as agents get more sophisticated, they’ll be able to browse the web on their own, potentially eliminating the need for a middle-man.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

📅 Pencil It In: Google Calendar is experimenting with a new Gemini panel that will let you create events, check your schedule, and do other tasks with simple text prompts.

🦖 Go Big: OpenAI and Oracle have started installing the first batch of an estimated 64,000 Nvidia GPUs inside their Central Park-sized Stargate data center in Texas.

🏆 Coming Soon: French AI startup Mistral, which makes the Le Chat chatbot, says it’s putting the finishing touches on a new open-source model that’ll beat DeepSeek’s R1.

📖 Page Turner: Sudowrite launched Muse, the “first AI made for fiction and designed for authors.” The startup says it’s a master of storytelling and narrative, and you can try it out at no cost here.

💰 Funding: Reflection AI, a startup co-founded by a pair of ex-DeepMind researchers, just emerged from stealth with $130M in funding and a valuation of $555M. It wants to achieve AGI by teaching AI how to make its own coding decisions.

PRODUCTIVITY

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SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending on socials today

🏴‍☠️ Prompt Pirates: It looks like the system prompts for Vercel’s v0 — a tool that lets you generate a custom UI with AI — might have leaked. It’s a big deal because coders could potentially use that information to reverse-engineer their own version of the app.

🛩️ Easier Said: Content creator Kai Lentit shows what vibe coding is really like these days as he tries to recreate the AI-generated flight simulator that now makes $50,000 a month.

👾 Retro Renders: Midjourney expert Rory Flynn shares his workflow for adding an “8-Bit nostalgia” filter to AI-generated clips.

🐝 Worker Bees: A viral post claims to show China’s new Manus AI agent running simultaneously across dozens of tabs on a single computer monitor. We couldn’t independently verify that it’s real, but if it is, then the US has a lot of catching up to do.

🔥 Self-Own: GPT-4.5 might have a future in comedy, as users and even OpenAI share the chatbot’s witty responses when asked to dunk on itself.

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

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Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team