Episode 285: Exploring MCP Apps & Adding Interactive UIs to Clients

The Real Python Podcast

Feb 20, 2026 1h 9m intermediate ai career

How can you move your MCP tools beyond plain text? How do you add interactive UI components directly inside chat conversations? This week on the show, Den Delimarsky from Anthropic joins us to discuss MCP Apps and interactive UIs in MCP.

Episode Sponsor:

Den is a member of the MCP Steering Committee and a Core Maintainer focusing on auth and security. He explains how MCP acts as a universal bridge, providing AI models with the real-time context they need. He shares insights on working with MCP Apps and moving beyond simple text to render web-based user interfaces directly in your chat window.

Den previously worked on GitHub Spec Kit, and we discuss taking advantage of spec-driven development and how to use “Skills” to remove the toil from your workflow. We also talk briefly about his podcast and his conversations about navigating careers in technology.

This episode is sponsored by AgentField.

Course Spotlight: Getting Started With Google Gemini CLI

Learn how to use Gemini CLI to bring Google’s AI-powered coding assistance into your terminal for faster code analysis, debugging, and fixes.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:17 – Den’s Background
00:02:53 – The Work Item Podcast
00:06:55 – Career Move to Anthropic
00:10:24 – What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
00:11:39 – MCP UI and MCP Apps
00:16:17 – Sponsor: AgentField
00:17:13 – Structuring MCP Tools
00:24:52 – Cloudflared & tunneling
00:29:59 – Reverse engineering with Ghidra MCP
00:35:43 – Connecting MCP tools
00:43:10 – Video Course Spotlight
00:44:23 – Spec-Driven Development & Context Management
00:57:23 – Leveraging Skills for Model Guidance
01:02:51 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
01:03:42 – What do you want to learn next?
01:07:14 – How can people follow your work online?
01:07:48 – Thanks and goodbye

Show Links:

Level Up Your Python Skills With These Courses:

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