MCP Servers: Teaching AI to Use the Internet Like Humans

If your MCP server has dozens of tools, it’s probably built wrong.

You need tools that are specific and clear for each use case—but you also can’t have too many. This creates an almost impossible tradeoff that most companies don’t know how to solve.

That’s why we interviewed Alex Rattray, the founder and CEO of Stainless. Stainless builds APIs, SDKs, and MCP servers for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Alex has spent years mastering how to make software talk to software, and he came on the show to share what he knows. We get into MCP and the future of the AI-native internet.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Start
00:01:14 - Introduction
00:02:54 - Why Alex likes running barefoot
00:05:09 - APIs and MCP, the connectors of the new internet
00:10:53 - Why MCP servers are hard to get right
00:20:07 - Design principles for reliable MCP servers
00:23:50 - Scaling MCP servers for large APIs
00:25:14 - Using MCP for business ops at Stainless
00:28:12 - Building a company brain with Claude Code
00:33:59 - Where MCP goes from here
00:41:10 - Alex’s take on the security model for MCP

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Alex Rattray: Alex Rattray (@RattrayAlex), Alex Rattray 
• Stainless: https://www.stainless.com/

What is AI & I?

Learn how the smartest people in the world are using AI to think, create, and relate. Each week I interview founders, filmmakers, writers, investors, and others about how they use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Midjourney in their work and in their lives. We screen-share through their historical chats and then experiment with AI live on the show. Join us to discover how AI is changing how we think about our world—and ourselves.

For more essays, interviews, and experiments at the forefront of AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought?sort=newest.