Welcome to our eight-week series on practical uses of AI for software crafters. Each week, we will have an expert talking about their learnings in this new a rapidly evolving field. If you're excited to learn how these new tools can enhance and support your skills, please join us!

This series is hosted in collaboration with Calgary Software Crafters: https://www.meetup.com/calgary-software-crafters

Description:

We want our software to be easy for people to use. That means building a great UI. Now that people work with AI agents, we need our software to be easy for agents to use. That means building a great MCP. Model Context Protocol servers give AI agents fingers to feel around and act in the world, one tool at a time.

In this session, I’ll share design considerations from the Honeycomb.io MCP. I’ll contrast MCP design with human UX and software APIs, then discuss ways to tell whether the MCP is effective in production.

Bio:

Jessica Kerr is a symmathecist, in the medium of code. She believes in learning systems made of learning parts: enthusiastic people and evolving software. She is a Principal Developer Advocate at Honeycomb.io, where she teaches developers to make their software teach them what’s going on inside.

In twenty years of professional software development, she has programmed in and spoken at conferences about Java, Scala, Clojure, TypeScript, Ruby, and Elm. She lives in St. Louis, MO with two children who invent worlds and draw characters with superpowers, and two cats who meow and knock over water glasses.