--- schema: 1 type: video title: >- MCP Apps: Primitives, discovery, and the Future of Software - Pietro Zullo, Manufact, Inc description: >- Everyone in this room knows what MCP is, but I am sure not many people know what MCP Apps are, how they work, how to build them and distribute them. By the end of this talk you'll know everything you need to join the race! MCP Apps are not just MCP servers with a UI bolted on. They're a full interaction layer: bidirectional, stateful, rendered by the host, with the model and the UI sharing live context. This talk is structured around **What MCP Apps actually are.** The architecture: how an App is declared via `ui://` resources, how the host renders it in a sandboxed iframe, how the JSON-RPC-over-postMessage transport works, and how state flows between the model and the UI. **The primitives that make them real.** `ui/update-model-context`, the App pushing live state into the model's context window without a user message. `ui/message`, the App talking back into the conversation unprompted. App Tools, the model calling into the App's registered tool surface. **A showcase of MCP Apps shipping today.** Concrete demos, not slides about what's possible. What early builders have figured out, what's hard, and what the interaction patterns look like in practice. **Distribution and discovery.** How the stores work, how to submit, what the surface looks like across hosts, and what the install/discovery UX actually means for builders. **Why companies will need to move** Any product that is used by humans through a UI will need an MCP App version, or it gets bypassed by all the people that are getting more and more used to do everything through agents. As long as there are people using these systems, MCP Apps is the answer. For the rest, there is MCP. Speakers: - Pietro Zullo (Manufact, Inc): Pietro is the co-founder of Manufact (YC S25). Manufact created and maintains mcp-use, an MCP framework with more than 8M downloads across PyPI and npm, one of the leading MCP development frameworks today. Manufact is the cloud for MCP. You can think of Manufact / mcp-use as Vercel / Next.js, but vertical on MCP Apps and servers. X/Twitter: https://x.com/pietrozullo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietrozullo/ GitHub: https://github.com/pietrozullo --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/sAOBXCDiDOs-mcp-apps-primitives-discovery-and-the-future-of-software 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/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/mcp-apps-primitives-discovery-and-the-future-of-sof-5bcebfdeb8d5 markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/mcp-apps-primitives-discovery-and-the-future-of-sof-5bcebfdeb8d5.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T08:45:09.190Z' language: null children: [] videoId: sAOBXCDiDOs durationSeconds: 1734 publishedAt: '2026-07-05T03:12:17.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 380 endSeconds: 497 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=380' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 508 endSeconds: 596 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=508' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 607 endSeconds: 690 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=607' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 701 endSeconds: 783 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=701' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 701 endSeconds: 783 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=701' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 794 endSeconds: 885 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=794' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 885 endSeconds: 984 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=885' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 1109 endSeconds: 1199 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1109' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 1199 endSeconds: 1210 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1199' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 1210 endSeconds: 1321 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1210' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 1331 endSeconds: 1412 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1331' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 1423 endSeconds: 1545 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1423' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 1423 endSeconds: 1545 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1423' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 124 endSeconds: 256 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=124' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 996 endSeconds: 1097 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=996' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 1556 endSeconds: 1667 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/sAOBXCDiDOs?t=1556' heldReason: rights --- # MCP Apps: Primitives, discovery, and the Future of Software - Pietro Zullo, Manufact, Inc Everyone in this room knows what MCP is, but I am sure not many people know what MCP Apps are, how they work, how to build them and distribute them. By the end of this talk you'll know everything you need to join the race! MCP Apps are not just MCP servers with a UI bolted on. They're a full interaction layer: bidirectional, stateful, rendered by the host, with the model and the UI sharing live context. This talk is structured around \*\*What MCP Apps actually are.\*\* The architecture: how an App is declared via \`ui://\` resources, how the host renders it in a sandboxed iframe, how the JSON-RPC-over-postMessage transport works, and how state flows between the model and the UI. \*\*The primitives that make them real.\*\* \`ui/update-model-context\`, the App pushing live state into the model's context window without a user message. \`ui/message\`, the App talking back into the conversation unprompted. App Tools, the model calling into the App's registered tool surface. \*\*A showcase of MCP Apps shipping today.\*\* Concrete demos, not slides about what's possible. What early builders have figured out, what's hard, and what the interaction patterns look like in practice. \*\*Distribution and discovery.\*\* How the stores work, how to submit, what the surface looks like across hosts, and what the install/discovery UX actually means for builders. \*\*Why companies will need to move\*\* Any product that is used by humans through a UI will need an MCP App version, or it gets bypassed by all the people that are getting more and more used to do everything through agents. As long as there are people using these systems, MCP Apps is the answer. For the rest, there is MCP. Speakers: - Pietro Zullo (Manufact, Inc): Pietro is the co-founder of Manufact (YC S25). Manufact created and maintains mcp-use, an MCP framework with more than 8M downloads across PyPI and npm, one of the leading MCP development frameworks today. Manufact is the cloud for MCP. You can think of Manufact / mcp-use as Vercel / Next.js, but vertical on MCP Apps and servers. X/Twitter: https://x.com/pietrozullo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietrozullo/ GitHub: https://github.com/pietrozullo --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/sAOBXCDiDOs-mcp-apps-primitives-discovery-and-the-future-of-software 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/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/mcp-apps-primitives-discovery-and-the-future-of-sof-5bcebfdeb8d5 · 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.