Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
01:33:19 · Shawn Wang, Mihail Eric, S2
[01:33:19] S0: Maybe they'll they'll just jump to cursorize, I guess. Is is that what you're saying? [01:33:21] S1: Well, exactly. Because I'm like, otherwise, then then you basically cannibalize cursor. Like, if if in a limit, what you're saying is GrockBot is the cursor, then you don't even need, like, a cursor if all under the hood is just becoming... It's the same team? So they... Maybe? [01:33:31] S0: Right now, don't care. But, yeah, it's all Growup. But... Yeah. Yeah. [01:33:35] S1: I I I buy that... I mean, I do accept that even things that seem outwardly just, like, nontechnical use cases under the hood are technical, can be, like, written and and designed and loaded in code. Like that, that much is absolutely true, right? The question is just more like, is a developer, is that their single point of entry? [01:33:52] S0: I think [01:33:52] S2: it's not even developer, right? Like you think of a regular person doing marketing that is using Claude code or just Claude in the app now is working in a code base that they would never know, never touch, but there's a code base manager. I think Cloud Tag is a good one for a background agents. It's a big way Anthropic works and you know, they make it. You should see [01:34:14] S1: how they work. Yeah. Take a shot. [01:34:17] S0: Okay. AI Native team. We've talked a lot about these topics of gateway. We just put a routing episode out today and MCP portal. I would say MCP portal is like the least established [01:34:28] S2: on MCPs.
01:34:28 · S2, Shawn Wang, Mihail Eric
[01:34:28] S2: on MCPs. [01:34:29] S0: I'm bullish on MCPs. It's there's not bullish or bearish. It's just is. It's just is a part of the landscape now. Right? [01:34:35] S1: Yeah. [01:34:36] S2: MCP That's a statement. There was a whole MCP is so bad. MCP is dead. People people like Extreme. MCP portals [01:34:43] S0: is an unproven business. I I thought about starting one. I actually pitched a guy in topic on on potentially starting one, and then I lost interest. I was interested in a lot a lot of things. But, like, what... What's what's in there? [01:34:55] S1: So, okay. So what I'm thinking here is if this is if this is the week design... More kind of geared toward scaling this out to, like, what happens when you take some principles... And a lot of this was informed by, like, the conversation I had with folks that were, you know, leading AI native teams AI native teams at, at respective companies. And so here, I think that something at MCP portal really becomes interesting once you're at a certain scale, where you effectively have to have a single point of entry to do things like governance, security, auditing, cost optimization. And so, you know, I... I'd be curious to hear what you see as the future or maybe lack thereof of something like this, but it to me is... And it's... If you believe in, like, an open router or, you know, some place... Like, a single point of entry for for many things to happen and connect to and be effectively, you know, governed, I feel like there's a world where this also can easily exist.
01:34:55 · Mihail Eric, Shawn Wang
[01:34:55] S1: So, okay. So what I'm thinking here is if this is if this is the week design... More kind of geared toward scaling this out to, like, what happens when you take some principles... And a lot of this was informed by, like, the conversation I had with folks that were, you know, leading AI native teams AI native teams at, at respective companies. And so here, I think that something at MCP portal really becomes interesting once you're at a certain scale, where you effectively have to have a single point of entry to do things like governance, security, auditing, cost optimization. And so, you know, I... I'd be curious to hear what you see as the future or maybe lack thereof of something like this, but it to me is... And it's... If you believe in, like, an open router or, you know, some place... Like, a single point of entry for for many things to happen and connect to and be effectively, you know, governed, I feel like there's a world where this also can easily exist. [01:35:43] S0: Yeah. My my only tweak on this is that this folds into the OLM gateway. So they they are the exact same platform. [01:35:49] S1: That I will give you. That I will give you. I can I can accept that? That actually, you can can agree with.
01:35:49 · Mihail Eric, Shawn Wang
[01:35:49] S1: That I will give you. That I will give you. I can I can accept that? That actually, you can can agree with. [01:35:53] S0: Yeah. And and then then, by the way, it also folds into the other thing of, what did I say? Was off z, you know, permissioning and all these things and billing. So, like, to the limit, all infra converges to the same exact problems where they have the box in the middle and then you have the box in two sides. The, you know, godbox will solve everything. Right? And For the enterprise. True only if you take... If you understand the job of the godbox. And so separating MCP portals and gateways means you don't fully accept that they are, you know, the the the same layer of problem. In a very similar way, I also find that people don't understand database querying to have a lot of the similar things where they will separate filtering from ranking from... Or or just, like, general recommendation Mhmm. If they're the same problem. So then you just come... Because when you take all these things, you combine them in the same layer, then you can sort of cross depend on things in useful ways. If there are different layers, then they cannot.
01:35:53 · Shawn Wang, Mihail Eric
[01:35:53] S0: Yeah. And and then then, by the way, it also folds into the other thing of, what did I say? Was off z, you know, permissioning and all these things and billing. So, like, to the limit, all infra converges to the same exact problems where they have the box in the middle and then you have the box in two sides. The, you know, godbox will solve everything. Right? And For the enterprise. True only if you take... If you understand the job of the godbox. And so separating MCP portals and gateways means you don't fully accept that they are, you know, the the the same layer of problem. In a very similar way, I also find that people don't understand database querying to have a lot of the similar things where they will separate filtering from ranking from... Or or just, like, general recommendation Mhmm. If they're the same problem. So then you just come... Because when you take all these things, you combine them in the same layer, then you can sort of cross depend on things in useful ways. If there are different layers, then they cannot. [01:36:52] S1: Yeah. I actually will not disagree with this. I think maybe the... Yeah, so it's slightly pedagogical. I think that this breaking up of separate terms versus one, I think it is absolutely correct that the underlying architecture is the godbox, where one thing goes in and there's a bunch of other stuff that is some third party, some internal... Some first party that all kind of exists on the other side of the godbox. So, yes, I agree with this, actually.
01:36:52 · Mihail Eric, Shawn Wang
[01:36:52] S1: Yeah. I actually will not disagree with this. I think maybe the... Yeah, so it's slightly pedagogical. I think that this breaking up of separate terms versus one, I think it is absolutely correct that the underlying architecture is the godbox, where one thing goes in and there's a bunch of other stuff that is some third party, some internal... Some first party that all kind of exists on the other side of the godbox. So, yes, I agree with this, actually. [01:37:18] S0: I I have a I have a spicy spicy tweet. I... Oh, god. Where where is the godbox tweet? Oh, yeah. So this is the m m m x Sure. N Sure. M plus n Let me bring it up. Architecture. So anyone working in infra needs to understand. Okay. Congratulations. You now have a job in infrastructure or you want to be an infra engineer. You need to understand that your entire job is making god boxes and then taking them apart. So either... Your problem is either you don't have enough... You don't have a good god box, or your problem is someone else's god box you don't like, so now you have to take it apart and make your own. [01:37:51] S1: That's funny. That's very funny. I like that. That's very funny. Into the heat death of the universe. Wow.