What are MCP apps and why should you care?

Most MCP tools today return text. But what if your agent could render a chart, a form, or a full dashboard right inside the chat? That's what MCP apps do — and they're already live on ChatGPT, Claude, and Amazon Quick. In this episode, Romain sits down with Luigi Pederzani, co-founder of Manufact (mcp-use, 10K+ GitHub stars), to explore MCP apps — the first official extension of the MCP protocol that lets servers return interactive UI inside AI chat interfaces. 🔑 Key topics covered: What MCP apps are and how they differ from standard MCP tools Why Amplitude saw 2x user retention with UI vs text-only responses How to build an MCP app with the mcp-use SDK (React + TypeScript) The #1 tool design mistake: wrapping OpenAPI specs directly as MCP "AI apps are the new browsers" — the Paul Graham thesis extended Auth, sandboxing, and security for MCP apps MCP becoming the de facto agent-to-agent protocol Deploying MCP servers with AWS AgentCore Gateway ⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 — Introduction & Luigi's background 02:43 — What are MCP apps? Philosophy & use cases 05:11 — "AI apps are the new browsers" 09:18 — Under the hood: building MCP apps with mcp-use SDK 14:28 — Auth & security: OAuth and sandboxed iframes 20:06 — Best practices: why OpenAPI-to-MCP is the wrong approach 24:23 — Origin story: mcp-use born from a Linux afternoon hack 30:06 — Use cases: B2C (ChatGPT App Store) vs B2B (enterprise) 33:21 — MCP as the A2A protocol nobody expected 37:09 — Will SaaS be consumed via MCP apps? 40:15 — Getting started: recommendations for developers 44:32 — Rapid-fire round 🔗 Resources mentioned: mcp-use SDK (GitHub): https://github.com/mcp-use/mcp-use Manufact Cloud: https://manufact.com/ Ora.ai (agent readiness scanner): https://ora.ai AWS Bedrock AgentCore Gateway: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-a... AgentMail: https://www.agentmail.to "Thinking, Fast and Slow" — Daniel Kahneman Luigi's LinkedIn:   / luigipederzani   👤 About the guest: Luigi Pederzani is co-founder of Manufact, the company behind mcp-use — one of the most popular open-source MCP SDKs. Manufact helps developers build, test, and deploy MCP servers and MCP apps in production. 🎙️ About the AWS Developers Podcast: Weekly conversations about Agentic AI and the future of software development with customers, AWS community members, and industry luminaries. Hosted by Romain Jourdan.