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Imagine it’s your birthday, and Grandma promised any cool experience you want. Grandma, Mom, Dad & Sis start a WhatsApp group to make it happen. You and Grandma brainstorm what to do for your birthday. Mom, Dad & Sis ignore the chat until tagged. Finally, you decide on a water park! Grandma tags @Sis: “Find water parks within 30 minutes.” Sis sees the @ notification, searches Google Maps and replies, “No water parks near us.” Grandma tries again. “Come on @Sis! Search within an hour drive.” Sis replies with 3 water parks roughly an hour away. Grandma repeats Sis’s list and elaborates on each. She recommends Fun Slides Island in Shelbyville: it has a lazy river, and you love tubing. “Let’s go this week!” you text the group. Grandma tags @Dad. “Check the weather.” Dad hasn’t been paying attention, so he responds with today’s weather for Springfield, “68 degrees and overcast.” Grandma grows frustrated. “Not today… and not Springfield! @Dad, give me 7 days of weather for Shelbyville!” Dad replies with the week’s forecast for Shelbyville. Grandma spots two sunny days: “Saturday or Sunday?” You have soccer on Sunday. “Saturday works!” Grandma then texts the WhatsApp group: “@Mom, buy 2 tickets for Saturday---one child, one senior.” “Done.” Mom sends the 2 ticket numbers proving she succeeded. Mission accomplished! “See you at the water park!” replies Grandma.

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What just happened

If regular ChatGPT is a 2-way WhatsApp conversation, then an AI agent is a group chat. (Really. That’s it.) Who else is in the group chat with you and the LLM? Tools. Like Mom, Dad & Sis, tools don’t follow the conversation, they just pay attention when tagged - and only read the message in which they’re tagged. Then they reply to the LLM - just like you do. LLMs call tools using “orchestrators.” In our story, that’s WhatsApp. When Grandma uses @ mention, Whatsapp pings the tool.

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Epilogue

Here’s what you might miss: Grandma is very smart, but her memory isn’t great. She forgets the entire conversation each time she hits “send.” You’d never be able to tell this from texting with her, because each time she gets a text, she re-reads the entire WhatsApp conversation from the start. The family knows this. To make life easier for Grandma, they start a new Whatsapp group every time a grandkid has a birthday. That way, Grandma doesn’t waste time reading old conversations.

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How I’d explain MCP to an eight year old

Grandma didn’t grow up with the internet, so she doesn’t know what Mom, Dad & Sis can do. To solve this, before you joined the chat, Mom, Dad & Sis texted Grandma how they could help her. In this case, maps, weather, and booking. (This was before you joined the chat, so you didn’t see those texts.) Now, when Grandma needs help, she knows who to ask and how to ask it - whatever the task, and regardless of who’s in the group to help.
If you want to go deeper on implementation and adoption, I offer live courses and workshops.