Welcome back to My Weird Prompts, everyone. It is January fourth, twenty twenty-six, and we are kicking off the new year with a deep dive into something that has been absolutely dominating the developer circles lately. I am Corn, and sitting across from me in our Jerusalem living room is my brother.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. Happy New Year, Corn. It is good to be back at the mics. We had a bit of a break over the holidays, but the world of artificial intelligence certainly did not take a vacation.
No, it did not. Our housemate Daniel actually sent us a really interesting audio prompt about something he has been obsessing over. He has been digging into the Model Context Protocol, or M C P, and how it is changing the way we build agentic systems. He is also curious about the culture around it, specifically the Discord communities and these hackathons that seem to be popping up everywhere.
It is a great prompt because it touches on both the technical "how" and the social "why" of the current A I landscape. M C P is one of those things that sounds like just another acronym until you realize it is the glue that makes autonomous agents actually useful. And Daniel’s point about the Discord culture is spot on. It is where the real innovation is happening right now.
Yeah, he mentioned feeling like he was walking into a teenage disco when he joined some of these servers. I think a lot of people feel that way. But before we get into the social dynamics, Herman, let’s ground this in the tech. For someone who has heard of M C P but hasn't built with it yet, what is the big deal? Why is this the protocol everyone is talking about in early twenty twenty-six?
Okay, so think back to how we used to connect models to tools. If you wanted Claude or G P T to use a database or browse the web, you basically had to write a custom integration for every single tool and every single model. It was a fragmented mess. Every developer was reinventing the wheel. The Model Context Protocol, which was pioneered by Anthropic and has since become a massive open standard, basically says, let’s have a universal interface.
So it is like the U S B of A I models?
Exactly. That is the perfect analogy. Instead of having a different plug for your mouse, your printer, and your keyboard, you have one standard. M C P allows developers to build M C P servers that expose data and tools. Then, any M C P-compatible client, like an A I agent or even an I D E like Cursor or Windsurf, can instantly understand and use those tools. It standardizes how a model asks for data, how it receives context, and how it executes actions.
And that is what makes these systems agentic, right? It is not just a chat box anymore. It is a system that can actually reach out, grab a file from your local machine, query a database, and then maybe even post a summary to Slack, all through a standardized communication layer.
Precisely. And what Daniel mentioned about agent-to-agent protocols is the next step. Once you have a standard for how a model talks to a tool, you naturally want a standard for how one agent talks to another. If I have an agent that specializes in research and you have an agent that specializes in coding, they need a common language to hand off tasks. Without protocols like M C P or the newer Agent Protocol standards, we are just stuck in these silos.
I remember back in episode two hundred fifteen, we talked about model rot and why code assistants change over time. It feels like M C P is a direct response to that instability. If the interface is standardized, the model behind it can change or update without breaking the entire workflow.
Spot on, Corn. It decouples the intelligence from the implementation. It means I can swap out a frontier model for a smaller, faster local model for certain tasks, and as long as they both speak M C P, my local files and my tools remain accessible. It is about interoperability. But what I find fascinating, and what Daniel touched on, is that this technical standardization is driving a very specific type of community.
Right, the Discord servers. Daniel mentioned that he feels like an intruder sometimes because of the gamer-centric history of Discord. But honestly, if you look at the M C P server or the LangChain or Autogen communities, these are professional developers, researchers, and hobbyists. It is just that the medium of communication has shifted.
It has. The barrier to entry for collaboration has never been lower. You can go from a thought in your head to a shared repository with five people you met ten minutes ago on a Discord voice channel. And that leads directly into his question about hackathons. Hackathons in twenty twenty-six are not what they were ten years ago.
No, they are definitely not just about free pizza and staying up for forty-eight hours in a dark room. Although, there is still some of that. But the modern A I hackathon is much more of a community-building event.
It really is. And I think we should talk about the mechanics of that, but first, I think we have someone who wants to sell us something... probably something we don't need.
Oh boy. Let’s take a quick break for our sponsors.
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Thanks, Larry. I think I will stick with my disorganized thoughts for now.
I don't know, Corn, speaking fluent Latin could be useful for reading some of those old philosophy papers I like.
Maybe, but the "vibrating headband" part is a bit of a red flag. Anyway, back to the topic. Daniel asked about what is involved in a modern hackathon. He was wondering if you need to arrive with an idea or how you even interact with people.
This is a common anxiety for first-timers. The short answer is: no, you absolutely do not need to arrive with a fully-baked idea. In fact, some of the best projects come from the brainstorming sessions that happen in the first few hours. Most hackathons, whether they are remote on Discord or in-person, start with a "team formation" phase.
Right, and that is where the social aspect comes in. Usually, there is a dedicated channel or a period of time where people pitch "seed ideas." Someone might say, "Hey, I want to build an M C P server that connects to my smart home via Home Assistant," and then three other people jump in and say, "I know the Home Assistant A P I!" or "I can build the frontend for that."
Exactly. And for someone like Daniel, who is already experimenting with M C P, he actually has a head start. He has what we call "domain context." If you have been playing with a specific niche, like voice technology, you are a valuable asset to a team. You don't need to be a world-class coder. You might be the person who understands the user flow or the specific constraints of the hardware.
I think that is a key point. People think hackathons are only for the "one percent" of developers who can write C plus plus in their sleep. But a modern A I project needs a lot of different roles. You need someone to prompt engineer, someone to manage the data, someone to think about the product-market fit, and someone to actually stitch the M C P servers together.
And the interaction is very fluid. On Discord, you’ll see people jumping between voice channels. It is very collaborative. People share snippets of code, they help each other debug M C P connection errors, and they celebrate small wins. It is less of a competition and more of a collective push to see what is possible with new tools.
How do you find these things, though? Daniel asked where to look.
There are a few main hubs. Devpost is still the big one for finding hackathons across all tech sectors. But for A I specifically, you want to look at platforms like Lablab dot A I or even just follow the official accounts of the tools you use. Anthropic, OpenAI, and LangChain are constantly sponsoring or hosting these events. And of course, the Discord servers themselves. If you are in the M C P Discord, they will announce "sprints" or hackathons specifically for building new servers.
And what about the "productive way to build a genuine community" part of his question? I think that is the most important bit. How do you go from a forty-eight-hour project to a real professional network?
That is where the second-order effects come in. When you work intensely with someone for a weekend, you see how they think, how they handle stress, and how they solve problems. That is a much better indicator of a good collaborator than a LinkedIn profile. I know people who met at a hackathon two years ago and are now running a startup together.
It is like a trial marriage for co-founders.
It really is! Or just for finding a group of friends who are into the same weird stuff you are. If you are the only person in your "real life" who cares about model context protocols, finding thirty people on Discord who are just as excited as you are is incredibly validating. It turns a solitary hobby into a social movement.
I love that. And it connects back to what Daniel said about virtual connections becoming real. You start as avatars on a screen, but then you meet up at a conference, or you start a weekly Zoom call to keep working on the project, and suddenly, you have a global network of peers.
And specifically for voice tech, which Daniel mentioned, that is a very tight-knit community. Because voice is so hard—you have to deal with latency, noise cancellation, and emotional inflection—the people who are good at it really rely on each other. If you show up to a voice-tech hackathon and you have even a basic understanding of how to reduce latency in a Web Sockets connection, you are going to make friends very quickly.
Let’s talk about preparation. If Daniel, or anyone listening, wants to do their first A I hackathon next month, what should they do today?
First, get your environment ready. If you are doing M C P, make sure you have the M C P Inspector installed and you know how to run a basic server locally. You don't want to spend the first six hours of a hackathon trying to figure out why your N O D E version is out of date.
Good point. Technical debt is the enemy of the hackathon.
Exactly. Second, I would say, browse existing M C P servers. Look at the M C P organization on GitHub. See what people have already built so you don't spend your time duplicating effort. Instead, think about how you can combine existing servers. Maybe you take a Google Calendar M C P server and a Slack M C P server and build an agent that actually manages your social life.
That sounds like something I could actually use. An agent that tells me when I am overscheduled and automatically declines meetings that could have been an email.
We could all use that, Corn. But third, and most importantly, practice your "elevator pitch" for yourself. Not for a product, but for you. "Hi, I'm Daniel, I've been experimenting with M C P and voice tech, and I'm really interested in building something that helps with X." That makes it easy for people to invite you into their teams.
It is about being "legible" to the community. Letting them know where you fit in the puzzle.
Exactly. And don't be afraid to ask "dumb" questions. In these niche communities, everyone is learning. M C P hasn't been around for decades. Most of the experts have only been doing it for a few months longer than you have. The "teenage disco" vibe Daniel mentioned is actually a sign of energy and rapid growth. It means the rules aren't set in stone yet. You can help write them.
I think that is a really empowering way to look at it. You are not an interloper; you are a pioneer.
Precisely. And the stakes are relatively low. If your project fails, you still learned a ton and met some cool people. If it succeeds, you might have the next big open-source tool on your hands. We saw this with a few projects back in episode one hundred eighty-three, where we talked about the "long tail" of A I models. A lot of those niche models started as hackathon experiments.
So, to summarize for Daniel: Join the Discord, don't worry about the age gap or the gamer aesthetic, show up with a basic technical setup and a willingness to collaborate, and focus on the "glue"—the protocols like M C P that make the whole system work.
And keep an eye on those agent-to-agent protocols. That is the next frontier. We are moving from "A I as a tool" to "A I as a workforce," and that requires a lot of standardized communication. Being the person who understands those standards is like being a network engineer in the early days of the internet.
It is a great time to be curious. And speaking of curiosity, we are so glad you all joined us for this exploration today. If you have been enjoying My Weird Prompts, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or whichever podcast app you are using. It genuinely helps other people find the show and keeps the community growing.
It really does. And if you have a "weird prompt" of your own, like Daniel did, head over to myweirdprompts dot com and send it our way. We love hearing what you are working on and what questions are keeping you up at night.
This has been episode two hundred sixty-three of My Weird Prompts. We are your hosts, Corn and Herman Poppleberry.
Stay curious, everyone. And maybe we will see you at a hackathon soon.
Thanks for listening. We will be back next week with another deep dive. Until then, take care.
Bye everyone!
Oh, and one last thing—Herman, are you actually going to buy that vibrating headband?
Only if it comes with a Latin-to-English dictionary, Corn. Only if.
Fair enough. See you all next time.
This has been My Weird Prompts. You can find us on Spotify and at our website, myweirdprompts dot com.
Sign-off.
Sign-off!
Seriously, Herman, the Latin thing... it’s a bit much.
"Carpe Diem," Corn. "Carpe Diem."
Okay, we’re done. See ya.
Goodbye!
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Actually, before we go, I should mention that we are planning a special episode on the ethics of these autonomous agents later this month. So if you have thoughts on that, definitely get in touch.
Oh, that is going to be a big one. The "agentic responsibility" question is only getting more complicated.
Exactly. Alright, now we are really going.
See ya!
Bye.
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Larry: BUY NOW!
