Everyone is talking about how magical AI is right now, but if you have spent any time experimenting with it recently, you have probably realized how difficult it is to get the results you want. None of the hype is particularly useful when you are trying to build something real. The magic looks good on paper until it meets real systems.I recently put together a talk called "Agents, Tools, and MCP, oh my!" that tries to cut through some of that noise. As developers, we are being handed a firehose of new tools and technologies, and I wanted to spend my session doing something a little different: break the pieces apart, reduce some of the complexity and overwhelm, and then build them back up so they actually fit together.