MCPs Are Now 10x Faster in Claude Code

If you follow me as an individual, cuz I do have my own channel, and I like to plug it as much as humanly possible. [laughter] I've just released a video on the tool search tool in Claude Code. Now, if you don't know what tool search tool was, it it's an it's a a way of handling MCPs. MCPs take up a lot of context. To have them running all the time, and the disadvantage of this is that you need to shut them on, you need to shut them off. Like, if you don't need to use the GitHub MCP, shut it off because it's taking up your precious context inside of Claude Code. Tool search just takes the description, a well-written description of the MCP, and it just it just cares about that. And then it will dynamically load the or lazy load, as they call it, uh the MCP when it needs it. And you'll see from the screenshot here, there's no I don't know if you recognize this if you're a user of Claude Code, but there was always this MCP light, and it's always blue and taking up loads of context. And you can see that Tarik's MCP layer is completely empty. You don't need to do anything to have this work. It's literally just update Claude, and it will just work, and it will just remove the um all of the all of the MCP context. It works in the Claude desktop app, which is really good, handy, cuz a lot of people a lot more when we'll get into Claude Code as well now. A lot of people are using the Claude desktop app. But what again what this means is, and it was something we talked spoke about last week when we went through Boris's um use of Claude Code. He he does everything from Claude Code. Let me know uh we've spoken about MCPs so much, but I'm really curious to know where people's knowledge gaps lie and and what MCPs do. But it's a it's an a way to interact with applications and, you know, online services like Notion or whatever you're using, Slack. Um it's a way to interact with them all within your AI. And you write natural language, rather than saying uh send, you know, interact with that API. Rather than send the name, last name, email address, you you know, as like a JSON structure, you just write it on plain English, and it will send it off, get the data, and present it back to you in plain English. None of this coding nonsense that you uh that you typically have to deal with when tradi- working with traditional APIs. MCPs answer that question. Now, because of this, on the one hand, we can use tools like Taskmaster to help us code as we write code. Um it could be documentation. There's I used one called Ref. It's an it's an MCP that helps uh extract up-to-date documentation for for newer technologies. Uh so, we can use it to help us write code, but we we can also use it just to again update a Notion database. You know, let's say we've got a new we we do everything in Notion for the podcast. Instead of instead of going onto Notion or opening up the app, just do it all within Claude Code, cuz I'm sat there. MCP is running. no longer taking up context. It's no longer taking up context, so I can just leave it running. I normally really just And and then you you load up Claude Code, and then you realize everything's like compacting really quickly. And then I shoot up MCP, and it's like, "Oh, cuz all the MCPs are now turned on again." Even though I'd turned them all off. You know, so it's really frustrating to manage your MCPs. Now I can just leave them all running. Now I can push to GitHub. Now I can chat with Notion. You can The Notion MCP is actually really well featured. You can get users, you can update pages, you can update databases, you can add to you know, it's really well featured MCP. So, I'd I'd definitely try it. While she's there coding, little side quest, uh add a thing to our little uh page that we've got for our news articles. Jobs a good'un, you know what I mean? Could I do that from my phone? Yeah, if if there's something that runs MCPs on your phone, absolutely. Just you need an MCP client. Um I'm hoping that Is that a good explanation? Cuz it is complicated. I understand it's complicated, and I'm I've got a video coming up next week specifically on MCPs, but I would like for people to feel like this is that they understand MCPs, the reason why it's important. Again, in my video next week, I'm going to show you what a traditional If if I was going to update a database on Notion with code, like what that would look like if you're going to write code. Now, I don't need to write any code. I can just literally say and and the AI will just figure it out figure out everything out in between. It's it's beautiful. I I understand the idea, but I didn't have like a proper use case until this week. Uh we launched a website for a client, and the images are not exactly how I want them. Like uh so, I don't want to go to the CMS and download everything and re-upload and and Yeah. And so on. Uh I want to use the Webflow MCP to to download all the images. I haven't done this yet, but that's the plan. To download all the images, um change them all to what I want, basically the dimensions and a few things like that. I don't know if I could edit them. Could I like edit them bulk edit them? Depends what the MCP uh Webflow MCP allows you to do. So, No, like with something else. That's what I mean. Like download them. Okay. Uh yeah, put them on my Dropbox or whatever, and then use another MCP to edit them, and then re-upload them to Webflow. Potentially. I just would not know what MCP you could run. You could The Figma MCP reads from your Figma, but I don't think it writes to your Figma. So, there might be one There might be one thing you can do, but what I would what I would do is download them to my local machine. Because I use Warp, which is my AI terminal, I have ImageMagick on downloaded on my computer. So, I just I'll just ask the AI terminal to say, "Look at this folder, change you know, do this to the image." Cuz mostly everything's run by ImageMagick. FFmpeg and ImageMagick literally run pretty much every ed- image editing tool or whatever you've ever seen. Um but yeah, you'll have to look around to see if there are any image editing What do you want to do to the images as an example? Uh change the dimensions. And maybe maybe if I could, would be cool to boost the contrast. You know how Apple has this auto edit mode, where it just adds a bit of contrast, a bit of color uh automatically. That would be nice. Yeah, so I would I would um again, download them to my local machine, and I would I would then go into Warp and say, "Go in this Go in this um folder and boost the contrast and change the dimensions to 16 by 9 or 9 by 16 or something like that." Um Yeah. And I think ImageMagick is so good that you can It probably has some sort of face detection. Let's say they're all profile pictures, and it probably has some sort of face detection, or at least a face detection plugin. And then just let my AI terminal do it, sort of thing. But um Okay. Yeah. Uh yeah, I don't know I don't know whether there are any image image editing MCPs that you can throw an image to and whatever. you using Warp, the free version or the paid one? I'm paying for it, but I'd be interested to know what the free version gets you. If you do want to If you do think about it, let me know, cuz I am on fire with my referrals for Warp, cuz I think everyone sees it sees me use it. Just like, "That's amazing." Um In fact, I'm going to let you I'm going to give you a [laughter] Send me the referral. Send it in the chat as well. I'll send the chat, cuz it is honestly really great, cuz it's just especially as you start to download FFmpeg, which is video editing or whatever, um ImageMagick, which is image editing. Uh if you're accessing servers as well, if I'm having trouble with a server, like I'll just say, you know, log into the server and figure out I've had a lot of problems with Docker images, so many Docker images running um and taking up loads of memory. I'll just say, "Find out where the where we can save memory on the server." And it will literally just do everything. It's it's it's great to have um it's great to have an AI terminal. It's like I would describe it, and we'll get into Claude Code again. I've said that a couple of times, but we'll get into Claude Code. I've put it up on the thing. Um Cool. It's it's it's basically what a Apple intelligence should be. It just turns your Mac into an AI Mac. It's it's great. This is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter.