--- schema: 1 type: video title: >- Building Agent Interfaces: Lessons from Chrome DevTools (MCP) for Agents — Michael Hablich, Google description: >- Chrome DevTools MCP shipped with one tool: debug_webpage. Agents failed silently because they couldn't compose behaviors. The team decomposed it into 25 focused tools and assumed the problem was solved. It wasn't — now agents had 25 tools and no reliable way to pick the right one. Michael Hablich's talk is an honest account of building the same thing wrong three times and what the fixes actually looked like. The concrete lessons: semantic summaries instead of raw 50,000 line JSON trace files, error messages rewritten so agents can self heal without a human in the loop ("Cannot navigate back, no previous page in history" instead of "Unable to navigate back in currently selected page"), a metric called tokens per successful outcome to measure interface fuel efficiency, and a deliberate decision to keep the autoconnect friction rather than remove it once they thought through prompt injection and the lethal trifecta. Speaker info: - https://x.com/MHablich - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hablich/ --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/_B4Pv9ttFgY-building-agent-interfaces-lessons-from-chrome-devtools-mcp-for-agents Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY' markdown: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY.md' llms: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY/llms.txt' parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T09:51:45.539Z' language: null children: [] videoId: _B4Pv9ttFgY durationSeconds: 1358 publishedAt: '2026-06-05T17:00:06.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 27 endSeconds: 150 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=27' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 27 endSeconds: 150 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=27' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 161 endSeconds: 260 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=161' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 260 endSeconds: 271 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=260' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 271 endSeconds: 350 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=271' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 271 endSeconds: 350 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=271' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 350 endSeconds: 362 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=350' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 499 endSeconds: 589 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=499' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 499 endSeconds: 589 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=499' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 499 endSeconds: 589 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=499' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 680 endSeconds: 691 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=680' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 691 endSeconds: 790 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=691' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 691 endSeconds: 790 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=691' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 800 endSeconds: 901 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=800' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 800 endSeconds: 901 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=800' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 901 endSeconds: 911 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=901' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 911 endSeconds: 1010 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=911' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 911 endSeconds: 1010 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=911' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 18 text: null startSeconds: 911 endSeconds: 1010 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=911' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 19 text: null startSeconds: 1021 endSeconds: 1108 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1021' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 20 text: null startSeconds: 1021 endSeconds: 1108 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1021' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 21 text: null startSeconds: 1119 endSeconds: 1217 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1119' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 22 text: null startSeconds: 1119 endSeconds: 1217 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1119' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 23 text: null startSeconds: 1217 endSeconds: 1228 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1217' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 24 text: null startSeconds: 1217 endSeconds: 1228 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1217' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 25 text: null startSeconds: 1228 endSeconds: 1358 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY?t=1228' heldReason: rights --- # Building Agent Interfaces: Lessons from Chrome DevTools (MCP) for Agents — Michael Hablich, Google Chrome DevTools MCP shipped with one tool: debug_webpage. Agents failed silently because they couldn't compose behaviors. The team decomposed it into 25 focused tools and assumed the problem was solved. It wasn't — now agents had 25 tools and no reliable way to pick the right one. Michael Hablich's talk is an honest account of building the same thing wrong three times and what the fixes actually looked like. The concrete lessons: semantic summaries instead of raw 50,000 line JSON trace files, error messages rewritten so agents can self heal without a human in the loop ("Cannot navigate back, no previous page in history" instead of "Unable to navigate back in currently selected page"), a metric called tokens per successful outcome to measure interface fuel efficiency, and a deliberate decision to keep the autoconnect friction rather than remove it once they thought through prompt injection and the lethal trifecta. Speaker info: - https://x.com/MHablich - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hablich/ --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/\_B4Pv9ttFgY-building-agent-interfaces-lessons-from-chrome-devtools-mcp-for-agents Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/watch/_B4Pv9ttFgY · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.