Musings on the Human Condition

  What Is This About? Since MCP servers (AI agents or Agentic AI) are all the rage, I figured "how hard can it be to build one?" What Is MCP? MCP and the AI Agent Landscape Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard created by Anthropic (the makers of Claude.ai) to action the promise of Agentic AI or AI Agents, that are supposed to be the intermediaries between humans and AI to help humans get stuff done. They also help Claude connect to the outside world, like the Web or your filesystem. Give Me More Context Claude's training with public data ended around October 2024. So, when you ask a question, Claude isn't generally aware of late-breaking information. Claude also doesn't automatically carry memories or context of what you discussed in earlier chat sessions. That's where MCP servers come in. They allow Claude to access data it wasn't trained with and use its training to answer our " today " questions using a combination of " traini...

I wrote an AI-assisted Python program to take my Web-based  timeline of Sikh affairs and convert it into a 169-slide PDF for easy viewing.  I started this project as a way to create a more user-friendly way for people to consume the timeline I created years ago based on  many hours of research and analysis over a number of years. My goal was to improve the formatting and add images for a more informative viewing experience . In other words, how to use the content you have and breathe new life into it . The programming effort took a couple of half days and some 500 odd lines of Python code. I used AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity) to provide suggested approaches and code, but didn't directly integrate it into my editor. I use Sublime for editing and selectively cut and paste recommended code as needed. The alternative is too intrusive and AI has free reign to make changes to your code wherein you eventually lose track and control over your program and no longer fully u...