5 ms·

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

95 points by gfortaine 8mo ago

er4hn 8mo ago
This must be what gwern meant when he said to write for AI.
Esophagus4 8mo ago
AWS has theirs as well: https://awslabs.github.io/mcp/servers/aws-documentation-mcp-server https://awslabs.github.io/mcp/servers/aws-documentation-mcp-... As it turns out these are very helpful for obscure features and settings buried in the documentation.
- nlawalker 8mo ago
  Microsoft too: https://learn.microsoft.com/training/support/mcp https://learn.microsoft.com/training/support/mcp https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/mcp https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/mcp https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/microsoft-learn-mcp-server-elevates-development/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/microsoft-learn-mcp-se...
ndriscoll 8mo ago
Why do people have to make this stuff so complicated? An API that requires a key and enabling an MCP server and configuring your client to fetch markdown files on the fly? There's documentation on how to set things up to be able to get the documentation? Why not just a tar with all the docs? How big are they? A couple MB? Agents are really good at using grep on text files. So is my text editor. Want it to be easy to update? Make it a git repo with all the docs. My agent already knows to always do a git fetch before interacting with a repo in a new session. Or you can fetch on a timer. Whatever. I haven't yet figured out the point of this MCP stuff. Codex seems to have innate knowledge of how to curl jira and confluence and gitlab and prometheus and SQL databases and more. All you need to configure is a .netrc file and put the hostname in AGENTS.md. Are MCP tools even composable? Like can the model pipe the response to grep or jq or another MCP call without it entering/wasting context? Or is a normal CRUD API strictly more powerful and easier to use?
- latchkey 8mo ago
  > Why do people have to make this stuff so complicated? Job security.
- superturkey650 8mo ago
  How do you manage auth for services that use OAuth? I’ve been wrapping the agent’s curl calls in a small cli that handles the auth but I’m wondering if other people have come up with something lighter/more portable.
  - acchow 8mo ago
    Having picked out an Oauth flow is one of the main selling points of MCP
- utopiah 8mo ago
  > Why not just a tar with all the docs? How big are they? A couple MB? fabien@debian2080ti:~$ du -sh /usr/share/man/ #all lang 52M /usr/share/man/ Yep... in fact there are already a lot of tooling for that, e.g. man obviously but also apropos.
- tvink 8mo ago
  The point of MCP is discoverability. A crud app is better, except you have to waste context telling your LLM a bunch of details. With MCP you only put into it's context what the circumstances are where it applies, and it can just invoke it. You could write a bunch of little wrapper scripts around each api you want to use and have basically reinvented MCP for yourself.
  - wincy 8mo ago
    I tried using the Microsoft azure devops MCP and it immediately filled up 160k of my context window with what I can only assume was listing out an absurd number of projects. Now I just instruct it to make direct API calls for the specific resources, I don’t know maybe I’m doing something wrong in Cursor, or maybe Microsoft is just cranking out garbage (possible), but to get that context down I had to uncheck all the myriad features that MCP supplies.
inshard 8mo ago
I can relate to this. Gemini 3 doesn’t know a thing about iOS 26 or Liquid Glass. It constantly assumes this is some custom view that I want it to develop and ends up building something out the previous gen apis like ultrathinmaterial.
lemonish97 8mo ago
So an mcp server just for google specific public docs? Aren't there a dozen of them like Context7 (https://context7.com/ https://context7.com/) that already do this?
- bryanhogan 8mo ago
  Also curious how this differentiates itself from Context7, which has been the go-to choice for something like this. Where's the benefit?
pulkas 8mo ago
There’s something almost nostalgic about it: cutting-edge technology wrapped in layers of bureaucracy that feel lovingly inherited from another era.
throwa356262 8mo ago
I need to give this a try, but nowadays I am reluctant to fire up Gemini CLI due to its insane appetite for tokens. It doesnt matter if your LLM in/out tokens are a bit cheaper than competitors when you use 3x of them on every prompt. Maybe Google should focus on addressing that first?
ako 8mo ago
Why not just an http server providing access to markdown files? Your llm can curl the files.
timwis 8mo ago
Would this be any better than just pasting links to the appropriate documentation for the technology you want to use in your AGENTS.md file? I suppose it's better if it's a single giant text file so there are fewer agent iterations navigating links within the docs but then doc sites could just provide that, like https://docs.avohq.io/3.0/llm-support.html https://docs.avohq.io/3.0/llm-support.html
skybrian 8mo ago
This could probably be a downloadable skill, but they will get more data about which docs coding agents are reading if it's an API call.

95 points by gfortaine 8mo ago

er4hn 8mo ago

This must be what gwern meant when he said to write for AI.

AWS has theirs as well: https://awslabs.github.io/mcp/servers/aws-documentation-mcp-server https://awslabs.github.io/mcp/servers/aws-documentation-mcp-... As it turns out these are very helpful for obscure features and settings buried in the documentation.

nlawalker 8mo ago
Microsoft too: https://learn.microsoft.com/training/support/mcp https://learn.microsoft.com/training/support/mcp https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/mcp https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/mcp https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/microsoft-learn-mcp-server-elevates-development/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/microsoft-learn-mcp-se...

ndriscoll 8mo ago

Why do people have to make this stuff so complicated? An API that requires a key and enabling an MCP server and configuring your client to fetch markdown files on the fly? There's documentation on how to set things up to be able to get the documentation? Why not just a tar with all the docs? How big are they? A couple MB? Agents are really good at using grep on text files. So is my text editor. Want it to be easy to update? Make it a git repo with all the docs. My agent already knows to always do a git fetch before interacting with a repo in a new session. Or you can fetch on a timer. Whatever. I haven't yet figured out the point of this MCP stuff. Codex seems to have innate knowledge of how to curl jira and confluence and gitlab and prometheus and SQL databases and more. All you need to configure is a .netrc file and put the hostname in AGENTS.md. Are MCP tools even composable? Like can the model pipe the response to grep or jq or another MCP call without it entering/wasting context? Or is a normal CRUD API strictly more powerful and easier to use?

latchkey 8mo ago
> Why do people have to make this stuff so complicated? Job security.
superturkey650 8mo ago
How do you manage auth for services that use OAuth? I’ve been wrapping the agent’s curl calls in a small cli that handles the auth but I’m wondering if other people have come up with something lighter/more portable.
- acchow 8mo ago
  Having picked out an Oauth flow is one of the main selling points of MCP
utopiah 8mo ago
> Why not just a tar with all the docs? How big are they? A couple MB? fabien@debian2080ti:~$ du -sh /usr/share/man/ #all lang 52M /usr/share/man/ Yep... in fact there are already a lot of tooling for that, e.g. man obviously but also apropos.
tvink 8mo ago
The point of MCP is discoverability. A crud app is better, except you have to waste context telling your LLM a bunch of details. With MCP you only put into it's context what the circumstances are where it applies, and it can just invoke it. You could write a bunch of little wrapper scripts around each api you want to use and have basically reinvented MCP for yourself.
- wincy 8mo ago
  I tried using the Microsoft azure devops MCP and it immediately filled up 160k of my context window with what I can only assume was listing out an absurd number of projects. Now I just instruct it to make direct API calls for the specific resources, I don’t know maybe I’m doing something wrong in Cursor, or maybe Microsoft is just cranking out garbage (possible), but to get that context down I had to uncheck all the myriad features that MCP supplies.

inshard 8mo ago

I can relate to this. Gemini 3 doesn’t know a thing about iOS 26 or Liquid Glass. It constantly assumes this is some custom view that I want it to develop and ends up building something out the previous gen apis like ultrathinmaterial.

lemonish97 8mo ago

So an mcp server just for google specific public docs? Aren't there a dozen of them like Context7 (https://context7.com/ https://context7.com/) that already do this?

bryanhogan 8mo ago
Also curious how this differentiates itself from Context7, which has been the go-to choice for something like this. Where's the benefit?

pulkas 8mo ago

There’s something almost nostalgic about it: cutting-edge technology wrapped in layers of bureaucracy that feel lovingly inherited from another era.

throwa356262 8mo ago

I need to give this a try, but nowadays I am reluctant to fire up Gemini CLI due to its insane appetite for tokens. It doesnt matter if your LLM in/out tokens are a bit cheaper than competitors when you use 3x of them on every prompt. Maybe Google should focus on addressing that first?

ako 8mo ago

Why not just an http server providing access to markdown files? Your llm can curl the files.

timwis 8mo ago

Would this be any better than just pasting links to the appropriate documentation for the technology you want to use in your AGENTS.md file? I suppose it's better if it's a single giant text file so there are fewer agent iterations navigating links within the docs but then doc sites could just provide that, like https://docs.avohq.io/3.0/llm-support.html https://docs.avohq.io/3.0/llm-support.html

skybrian 8mo ago

This could probably be a downloadable skill, but they will get more data about which docs coding agents are reading if it's an API call.