MCP’s Role in the Next Phase of AI Agents

I outline how longer-running AI tasks are changing the needs of agent systems, and why connecting agents to the tools and services people use is becoming increasingly important. The talk reviews MCP’s development and the priorities its community is addressing for the years ahead.

- AI agents beyond coding: changing model capabilities and the requirements of knowledge work
- MCP today: industry adoption and the move toward stateless operation
- Next priorities: agent-to-agent messaging and long-running tasks, skills, identity and authorization, plus ways to contribute

For developers, technology leaders, and organizations exploring agent systems, this offers an overview of MCP’s direction and the issues shaping its use. Viewers can use these themes to consider which systems their agents need to connect to and how to contribute through MCP servers, working groups, or the open-source community.