973: The Web’s Next Form: MCP UI (with Kent C. Dodds)
Scott and Wes sit down with Kent C. Dodds to break down MCP, context engineering, and what it really takes to build effective AI-powered tools. They dig into practical examples, UI patterns, performance tradeoffs, and whether the future of the web lives in chat or the browser.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:44 Introduction to Kent C. Dodds
02:44 What is MCP?
03:28 Context Engineering in AI
04:49 Practical Examples of MCP
06:33 Challenges with Context Bloat
08:08 Brought to you by Sentry.io
09:37 Why not give AI API access directly?
12:28 How is an MCP different from Skills
14:58 MCP optimizations and efficiency levers
16:24 MCP UI and Its Importance
19:18 Where are we at today with MCP
24:06 What is the development flow for building MCP servers?
27:17 Building out an MCP UI.
29:29 Returning HTML, when to render.
36:17 Calling tools from your UI
37:25 What is Goose?
38:42 Are browsers cooked? Is everything via chat?
43:25 Remix3
47:21 Sick Picks & Shameless Plugs
Sick Picks
Kent: OneWheel
Shameless Plugs
Kent: http://EpicAI.pro,http://EpicWeb.dev,http://EpicReact.dev
Hit us up on Socials!
Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads
WYSIWYG
At React Summit in New York, KBall & Nick sat down with Kent C. Dodds & Theo Browne for two fascinating conversations. Both of them showed us the whole gamut of their personalities!
Kent shared his insights on effective teaching methodologies and the future of developer education, while diving deep into React and the Remix/React Router ecosystem, and closing on an appeal for kindness int he world.
Then Theo took us behind the scenes of his developer-focused content creation, from streaming to the origins of the T3 stack, and how his online persona (including T3!) is “just him”.
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Featuring:
Kent C. Dodds – Website, GitHub, X
Theo Browne – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
React Summit
Epic Web
Remix
React Router
T3 Stack
Cursor
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Supper Club × Ryan Florence of Remix
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Ryan Florence about Remix, working at Shopify, the history of licensing and pricing, quitting Twitter, the state of React Server components, and more.
Show Notes 00:35 Welcome
Ryan Florence
Ryan Florence (@ryanflorence) / X
React Training
React Router Docs Moved
ryanflorence (Ryan Florence) · GitHub
01:42 Collarbone update
06:47 What is Remix?
Remix.run
11:43 Server actions
15:33 What was the history around licensing?
20:30 Open source is weird now
22:21 Working with Shopify and Hydrogen
Remixing Shopify | Remix
CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty of CSS Design
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web: Shea, Dave, Holzschlag, Molly E.: 9780321303479: Amazon.com: Books
28:04 On quitting Twitter
35:33 What’s coming up with v2 of Remix?
40:30 The reality of breaking changes
44:18 What’s the status of React Server components?
49:46 Will Remix ever have React Server components in it?
50:55 How should we be fetching our data?
53:04 Do you have a wishlist for JSX?
58:45 Supper Club questions
Strapi - Open source Node.js Headless CMS 🚀
Sidekiq
GitHub - i-tu/Hasklig: Hasklig - a code font with monospaced ligatures
GitHub - sindresorhus/terminal-snazzy: Elegant Terminal theme with bright colors
08:24 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Minivans
Shameless Plugs Shopify
Tweet us your tasty treats Scott’s Instagram
LevelUpTutorials Instagram
Wes’ Instagram
Wes’ Twitter
Wes’ Facebook
Scott’s Twitter
Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
Wes Bos on Bluesky
Scott on Bluesky
Syntax on Bluesky
Remix helps bridge the network chasm
Kent and our panelists dive deep on the hottest new React framework: Remix. What it does today, what makes it special, how it lured Kent away from a lucrative independent teaching career, and what’s coming up next.
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Featuring:
Kent C. Dodds – Website, GitHub, X
Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Ali Spittel – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Divya – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Remix Vs Next
Fly.io
JSParty #119 Redwood brings full-stack to the JAMstack
Remix Quickstart
Remix Deep Dive
Remix Discord
React Server Components and Remix
A better idea would be to replace / improve the fetch spec
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Getting hooked on React
This week we talk with Kent C. Dodds, one of the greatest React teachers in the industry, all about React! Why choose React over another framework? What are the hardest parts about learning React? You’ll find out this week!
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Featuring:
Kent C. Dodds – Website, GitHub, X
Emma Bostian – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Epic React
React docs
Getting Closure on React Hooks by Swyx
Common Mistakes With React Testing Library
Soft Skills Podcast
Why React Hooks
JSParty Building on the TanStack
React Testing Library
The Beginner’s Guide to React on Egghead.io
The Beginner’s Guide to React v2 on Egghead.io
React Error Boundary
My State Management Mistake
Remix
Remix Docs
React Query
Aha Programming
Cher Scarlet
When to Break Up a Component Into Multiple Components
Tanner Linsley
React Router
Ryan Florence
Michael Jackson
React Helmet
Chantastic React Podcast + Kent
I think y’all know what side I’m on
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Teaching in Public w/ Kent C. Dodds (part 2)
Over the next couple of episodes of this show, we're talking about learning and teaching in public. Today, we sit down with Kent C. Dodds. Kent has created some of the most important teaching materials for React developers at epicreact.dev.
In this part 2 with Kent, we talk about building a teaching platform and the importance of giving away most of your knowledge for free.
🌎 Kent on the Web
Twitter - @kentcdodds
Epicreact.dev
Testing JavaScript
Kent's Blog
Kent's Website
Discord
Courses
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📮 Ask a Question
If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.
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Teaching in Public w/ Kent C. Dodds (part 1)
Over the next couple of episodes of this show, we're talking about learning and teaching in public. Today, we sit down with Kent C. Dodds. Kent has created some of the most important teaching materials for React developers at epicreact.dev.
In this part 1 with Kent, we talk about the roots of why Kent cares so much about teaching.
🌎 Kent on the Web
Twitter - @kentcdodds
Epicreact.dev
Testing JavaScript
Kent's Blog
Kent's Website
Discord
Courses
✨ Sponsor: Linode
Thank you to long time sponsor and friends of the show Linode for sponsoring today's episode!
Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode’s Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier.
Listeners of Developer Tea can now enjoy $100 in free credit! You can find all the details at linode.com/developertea.
📮 Ask a Question
If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.
🧡 Leave a Review
If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.
How Would You React?
Part 1The crew chats about how Paul and Sara made the transition from individual contributors to managers overseeing teams of engineers. Sara used to see this transition as a form of selling out, but has a new perspective after having made the shift. Paul admits he still doesn’t feel like a “CEO” and how he approaches his role as the co-founder who focuses on creating signal instead of operations. OF course, we argue about Bitcoin, and finally we examine the role luck plays in life, especially for The Rock.
Interview - Kent C DoddsKent admits that when he first tried programming, he just couldn’t understand strings, and decided the career path wasn’t for him. He ended up on a track that would have made him an accountant or business intelligence analyst. From that perch, however, he began to find ways to automate and improve his workflows. Not only did this help him stand out at work, it reawakened his interest in coding, which is now his full time career.
Part 2 Sara talks about the difference between writing code for software applications, and writing firmware, which she got into while helping to launch and run Jewelbots. Paul and Sara recall what it was like working in tech during the 90s, when they had to constantly worry about how to conserve RAM. We also talk about the days before Git, when folks passed a hard drive around from hand to hand. The kids today have no idea how good they have it.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
#052 – Creating a Popular Product and Selling It to Governments with Tiffany and Danny of Remix
When the founders of Remix released a side project that unexpectedly went viral, they put their heads together and decided to turn it into a startup. Co-founders Tiffany Chu and Danny Whalen share how they were able to build instantly popular software, the mistakes they made and lessons they learned selling it to the governments who needed it, and how they grew from 4 founders and no customers to a 55-person team serving 275 cities and transit agencies across the world.
Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/052-tiffany-and-danny-of-remix
First-time contributors and maintainer balance (Interview)
Kent C. Dodds joined the show to talk about guiding and supporting first time contributors to open source. We talked about the many ways to be first-timer friendly, how to contribute to open source, the burden and balance of a maintainer, and a few of the projects Kent maintains, including his latest project at PayPal called Glamourous.
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GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product.
Featuring:
Kent C. Dodds – Website, GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
First Timers Only
firsttimersonly.com + GitHub repo
all-contributors - ✨ Recognize all contributors, not just the ones who push code ✨
all-contributors-cli
[egghead.io] - How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub
Changelog.com on GitHub
Thanks to Marco Vito Moscaritolo for this PR
Thanks to Christian Franco for this PR
stack-overflow-copy-paste - Utility functions copy/pasted (and modified slightly) from Stack Overflow
Managing an Open Source Project - a talk from Kent C. Dodds
The Changelog #242: The Burden of Open Source
with James Long
Why I’m Frequently Absent from Open Source by James Long
Healthy Open Source by Mikeal Rogers
Learning to Quit
Glamorous! Blog post + GitHub repo
Make a Pull Request
Adam Stacoviak in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a peacekeeping mission with the United States Army in 2000.
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!