4 Lessons Learned Building With MCP Tools & Vonage APIs

Benjamin Aronov, a developer advocate at Vonage and a community builder with a background in Ruby on Rails, shares his insights on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Vonage APIs. He recounts the lessons learned from working with MCP tools, highlighting the importance of viewing agents not as code generators but as orchestration layers to use existing functionalities effectively. Aronov discusses the challenges of configuration and reliability in IDE connections, the limitations of using stdio for external systems, and the need for thoughtful tool design to manage context budgets. He emphasizes the significance of creating tools with clear boundaries and responsibilities to build a trustworthy and extensible system, while also exploring how MCP encourages a shift in thinking about software development for agent use rather than just human interaction. Aronov plans to continue experimenting with various MCP tools and invites others to share their experiences and insights.