529: Agent, MCP, and Tooling: Taming Cross‑Platform DevFlows

00:00.33 James Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast, talking about all things in the wide world of software development. I'm one of your hosts, not wearing glasses tonight is James Montemagno. With me, the man, the myth, the legend, the one wearing glasses, which we very rarely see.

00:16.04 James Mr.

00:15.99 Frank ah

00:16.23 James Frank Kruger.

00:17.49 Frank Hi, James. It's wonderful to actually see you. Most nights I just go blind. You know, it's it's it's better if I look at you and you're just a blurry mess off in the distance. It's not true. Normally I wear contacts.

00:29.96 Frank I have this bad habit I wear the contacts for too long. and then I need a reset time. So time to let the eyes heal and relax. And so you get to see me wearing glasses. Hello.

00:41.35 James I like it I like it, I'm into it They're pretty nice. They do look like. Aim. Mid. 40 year old's glasses. So you've nailed the look.

00:50.93 Frank Ouch.

00:51.39 James Like it.

00:52.03 Frank That's what my friend said. She said, you look like an old professor. Alright, alright.

00:57.00 James I didn't say old. I didn't say old.

00:58.87 Frank Okay.

00:59.54 James I said mid-40s, only halfway through your life, sir.

01:03.73 Frank i'm I'm a third of the way through my life. I expect our generation to make it to at least 120, 130.

01:08.96 James You think so?

01:11.01 Frank ah Maybe the generation after us. Maybe Gen Alpha.

01:13.49 James man Well, it depends how much Brando we drink.

01:15.60 Frank Something like that.

01:16.95 James Cause you know.

01:17.72 Frank Yeah, exactly.

01:18.23 James It's got electrolytes. It's got electrolytes.

01:20.12 Frank ah

01:21.81 James Is the door...

01:21.61 Frank They'll probably have better vision than me though. I don't think we've healed vision yet. Sorry.

01:25.85 James The door behind you looks like either an inflatable tub or a bathtub. That is like.

01:32.49 Frank Ooh.

01:33.29 James Filled with water, but it's it's like... tilted sideways and the water is floating in there because the blue is just like majestic blue color right now. Do you see what I'm saying? It's like a

01:42.39 Frank The met majestic blue is the majestic.

01:42.69 James Not that one, to your to your right.

01:45.11 Frank Sky color coming in through the other room, hitting a white wall.

01:50.24 James Mm.

01:50.23 Frank vaguely natural.

01:51.60 James Mm.

01:51.40 Frank wall's a tiny bit dirty but but it's mostly just sky color hitting that wall and then through a very um frosted piece of glass, so it's diffusing that light very nicely.

01:52.97 James Ooh. Mm.

02:04.24 Frank I have no idea. Oh, yeah, like like a shower door, I guess.

02:07.100 James Yeah.

02:07.98 Frank That's kind of what it looks like.

02:09.50 James Hmm.

02:09.41 Frank But it's just frosted glass because I live in the quirkiest of quirky houses. The previous owner liked quirky and now I like quirky and I live with quirky with my glasses.

02:19.68 James I like it that's science.

02:21.70 Frank ah Um...

02:23.44 James That's science.

02:24.95 Frank Yeah, you know. I'll try more um sophisticated futuristic glasses and I'll make sure to change the sun color next time. so the like leaking through matches.

02:35.99 James Let's do it Let's do a little updates episode. but it up up Updates, update number one, did Frank Krueger see Odyssey?

02:39.79 Frank Ooh.

02:44.49 Frank Oh, update on Odyssey, the Frank Krueger Odyssey for to see the Odyssey. ah No, no, I have not, James. But thankfully, you helped me solve an Odyssey mystery.

02:55.91 Frank Hmm. Were there any mysteries in the Odyssey? Can't remember. You and I discovered where the actual IMAXs are. And then I was like, James, this website's not working. There are no seats available. And you discovered a fun fact.

03:09.54 Frank No, you got to go into the future. In the future Odyssey, there might be an Odyssey. Because, oh my God, because there are so few IMAX theaters out there in the world now, they're all booked up. basically. And so maybe, you know, come Christmas time, I'll be able to watch The Odyssey or something like that.

03:26.83 Frank I do plan on seeing it still. I am curious if it'll make it onto my television before I actually see it in the theater. But everything's saying I will see the Odyssey. eventually.

03:39.06 Frank for the sequel. Wow.

03:40.78 James um I like it.

03:40.92 Frank What's the sequel? like Odyssey is the sequel to The Iliad. Well, I feel like there's a sequel to the Odyssey too.

03:49.01 James uh, i don't know sequel to the uh

03:50.87 Frank Hmm. I don't know. That's a trivia question for you. Well, you know those Greeks.

03:54.50 James That is.

03:55.89 Frank They they they did...

03:56.29 James Hello, Ginny.

03:56.71 Frank They did like them.

03:58.63 James Telagini.

03:58.88 Frank Oh.

04:00.84 James It's a story that's often forgotten and even lost in some accounts, but the only surviving summary that details the key events of the poem.

04:02.93 Frank Oh.

04:07.50 James It's very much a sequel to Homer's epic tale. The Odyssey. Talamakas. Penelope and the Circle. Insert gay. all featuring throughout the story. so I don't know anything about Amnesty.

04:17.35 Frank Cersei. Cersei, not Cercei.

04:19.78 James Mmm.

04:19.40 Frank Cersei.

04:20.47 James Sorry. Yeah.

04:21.38 Frank Cersei is the the... I haven't seen the Odyssey, but I know the story. Cersei is the... the the Demigod who captured. Odysseus. Am I losing it?

04:33.83 Frank No one knows. No one cares.

04:34.79 James I don't think so

04:35.95 Frank ah

04:35.88 James I don't think so. Thank you, guys. Okay, a little. Mobile development update update. A few podcasts ago, we...

04:43.42 Frank Okay.

04:45.68 James talked a little bit about this new Plug in. with a marketplace, with a canvas. With an MCP server.

04:53.61 Frank Yes. your favorite Your favorite topic can buy. Canvases.

04:57.97 James Can buy, can buy.

04:58.41 Frank Speaking of Greek.

05:00.03 James ah John Dick, who is one of the engineering leads on Don and Maui, came out with this. marketplace extension plugin. thingy that you would install. I actually made two things. He made just a.

05:12.54 James dotnet global tool that would be a mcp server that you could invoke so you could just call the mcp tools without any

05:15.37 Frank oh Nice. Yeah.

05:19.40 James Anything else? Just like run your emulator simulator?

05:20.98 Frank Dig it.

05:21.39 James just do it. But. If you want to put. your emulator simulator into your editor. And. Like not see the code, but see the agent. To have the ability to see your emulator simulator and you see the emulator a simulator.

05:34.30 Frank Yes.

05:36.53 James He made this thing called mobile canvas or just mobile device canvas thingy. Mobile canvas is what we're calling it, I guess. And it was an. Canvas.

05:47.19 James poor. Or get them, co-file it.

05:48.95 Frank You got this, James.

05:50.48 James Woof! For the GitHub. Copilot app. And you install it and you'd go into your session and say, open mobile canvas. And you see your, pick your Android emulator simulator and boom. And then also there's all these MCP tools. So it could click, it could point, it could do all this stuff. It was pure magic.

06:04.64 James And I got it up and running on my Windows machine and my Mac machine. It's much smoother on. Mac because of how he can.

06:10.15 Frank Oh.

06:10.54 James pull the video, I guess, from even the Android emulators.

06:13.06 Frank Yeah.

06:13.59 James But the iOS simulators, buttery smooth because they're iOS simulators. And, you know, remember the old remote iOS simulator that you're like, see your eye over here.

06:19.00 Frank Yeah.

06:20.31 James It's like just butter smooth like that.

06:21.04 Frank That was very clever stuff. Yeah.

06:22.69 James Yep. Now. So now... He also, and we hinted at it. released officially the VS Code. mobile canvas extension you can get it already has 1500 installs in under Like a week.

06:37.98 Frank Yeah. To be clear, this is a VS Code extension, so you don't have to use those newfangled not-IDEs anymore. You can use your trusted not-IDE called VS Code.

06:51.99 Frank Nothing's an IDE anymore, but everything is all integrated development environments. And now you got the phone integrated into the development environment. This is actually great news for me because um I get a little bit frustrated sometimes with the GitHub Copilot app and the way it does work trees and all that nonsense, whatever. um so i'm actually excited for this because i still spend a fair amount of time in vs code so you told me about this and i didn't get a chance to react but like yeah this is a big deal for me because i'm still spending my whole life in there I know I should get used to running 12 different agents simultaneously, working on 24 different PRs all at the same time, but I'm still kind of a serial guy. So I still like looking at the code. I still like seeing what it's doing to my beautiful app. And this is literally so I can see what it's doing to my beautiful app. um So I am very excited for this. And that's a big deal. 1 ,500 downloads in just a week. So I believe there was a little bit of demand for this, it it turns out.

07:53.58 James Pretty good. Yeah. And I did a little ah short for the VS Code channels talking about it and showing off the iOS stuff with a Swift app. And many people ask, oh, does this work with... you know flutter or react native or blah it's like if you're If you have an emulator.

08:07.68 James it will work. Now you and I talked about that it needs the accessibility labels, but every framework basically supports that.

08:08.95 Frank Okay.

08:12.78 James So go do it.

08:13.36 Frank Yeah.

08:14.47 James And, uh, Go get it ready. And it's it's pretty fantastic.

08:17.93 Frank And. You don't even need the accessibility labels because at the worst, it'll do a screenshot.

08:21.52 James Hmm.

08:23.95 Frank And most of these networks can read screenshots. It's just when you're asking it to interact that it it does a bad job. But if you're just like, hey, look at the screen, doesn't it look terrible?

08:34.37 Frank It can at least do that and be like, oh yeah, maybe I shouldn't use bright green against you know bright yellow.

08:38.78 James Ha ha.

08:38.98 Frank so yeah so i i still appreciate it it can still do screenshots even if um i can't find your button because

08:39.14 James That's right.

08:46.22 Frank it' it's still a plague talk about update there's no update on the toolbars but toolbars are still a plague i guess on ios like there is no good accessibility with toolbars What is going on, Apple? Fix that.

08:57.97 James Yeah, I don't know I that was also the same it seemed like it pretty much hates toolbars And I don't know what to do about that.

09:02.26 Frank Yeah.

09:03.67 James because you need them.

09:05.77 Frank of them. it's especially with um i want to call it acrylic because i saw you updated your thing with acrylic but that's the microsoft windows term liquid glass especially with liquid glass because everything just looks better if you're using a toolbar the correct toolbar now.

09:19.32 James It does. Oh. i'll Also point out one thing. Is that. Mr. John Dick himself has a PR open. I saw a screenshot today. of adding a Windows app canvas.

09:30.16 James So if you've got a Windows app.

09:31.48 Frank Oh my gosh.

09:32.59 James Boom. And where there's a Windows app, I bet there's probably a... Mac app as well. I'm sure I support.

09:38.56 Frank have

09:38.22 James So ideally imagine, you know, supporting all the platforms and sucking it in.

09:40.57 Frank Yeah.

09:41.98 James That'd be pretty awesome because Tiny clips. Has. a Windows app and it has a Mac app.

09:47.89 Frank Yeah.

09:47.72 James And I have a bunch of other apps that are that way too. It'd be really cool to like. see that you know and have it tested in real time. ah For the agent right now, it's kind of guessing.

09:54.89 Frank Amen. Aren't you like the screen capture guru? Haven't you studied that code inside and out? You've debugged every version of it. You've worked through every... um permission and all that kind of stuff, everything that gets in the way.

10:10.63 James Maybe.

10:10.85 Frank You're a pro, right?

10:12.15 James I'm...

10:11.97 Frank Maybe.

10:13.11 James That code's hard. I think that...

10:15.21 Frank nothing

10:14.98 James ah I'll just let. I mean, John's got it going on, so um I'll let him do it.

10:19.40 Frank Oh yeah.

10:20.49 James He's got the PR open, so it's there. It's ready to go. But check it out. NVS Code, whatever you're using, MAUI, Flutter. Rack native, Swift, Kotlin, whatever, doesn't matter, YOLO it, go to town.

10:28.21 Frank Yeah.

10:29.20 James Now there's another update because if you are a .NET MAUI developer.

10:31.28 Frank Oh boy.

10:33.57 James ah Or maybe just an iOS or Android. .NET developer without Maui. There's an exciting update.

10:39.11 Frank and

10:39.48 James Isn't there, Frank Kruger?

10:42.05 Frank I don't know. What are you even hinting at? You you got me you got me beat here, buddy.

10:46.01 James There's a link. There's a link.

10:47.30 Frank Oh, there's a link.

10:48.52 James In the chat.

10:50.17 Frank In the chat. I have no idea what you're talking about, James. There's too many links in the chat. surprised me.

10:56.87 James Okay, it's the big...

10:56.97 Frank what's What's going on? but Because you announced you you said something important to me, native UI developer. So you have my interest.

11:02.70 James Okay.

11:03.97 Frank I'm here. Tell me.

11:05.08 James Okay, well, let me go ahead and post the link one more time for you. The Zencaster UI, not great.

11:08.95 Frank That flow.

11:09.84 James Okay. um so

11:12.18 Frank That flow is back, bitch. Maybe.

11:14.28 James Approved by me. which meant nothing because I don't have like ah admin rights to approve anything, but approved by me. And Jan and Gerald by the one and only John Dick adds.

11:25.45 James Run the DevFlow agent in plain .NET apps with no MAUI references.

11:31.37 Frank Thank you so much guys. I really appreciate this. um So. this is a big deal because you're not pulling in um maui controls or uh what what's it called like Yeah, MAUI controls is kind of the big XAML stuff. So MAUI is kind of a cross-platform library. MAUI Essentials is your abstraction over all the hardwares. MAUI Controls is kind of your XAML world.

11:55.52 Frank And. for it to do all its... um crazy visual tree stuff and all its integration, it uses that controls library.

12:05.94 Frank But if you're not using the controls library, you don't have an app class, you haven't initialized your dependency injection because you don't believe in dependency injection, then none of this worked for you. But now it seems like it's going to work for me. I'm curious, like, do I actually have to put... dependency injection in my app i'm hoping i don't have to i'm hoping they just do lots of nasty things and just go search at the scene hierarchy and then dig into the window hierarchy then dig into the view controller heart hierarchy that would be fantastic um either way i'm glad that i got heard

12:40.51 Frank I don't know how many people are like me. I don't know how many people are building native apps out there and not using Maui, but um I appreciate this feels like it was written just for me. Was it written just for me?

12:51.58 James I mean, it's... It's relatively likely likely, I would say, probably. I did happen.

12:58.67 Frank an act

12:59.04 James to go and talk to John Dick. And I was like, hey. Listen to this podcast episode. He's like, oh gosh. Oh, here we go.

13:05.61 Frank Oh no.

13:06.81 James There we go.

13:07.02 Frank here

13:07.60 James So, you know, the team's been on a roll, which is really cool.

13:08.13 Frank Hmm.

13:10.32 James So there's a bunch of different packages that. basically allow you to they they basically abstracted down the core of the the root of it Um, where there's no now Maui dependencies for like the HTTP server, the agent options. Defo agents like networking and profiling all that stuff. It's there.

13:26.55 James And then there's sort of a Maui layer on top of it, which funnily enough is how, like you said, Don and Maui is sort of architected today. It's there and then it builds on top of it. So a little bit of restructuring there, only a 30. 2 ,000 line edition and 9 ,000.

13:39.61 Frank 200.

13:39.81 James line removal.

13:41.81 Frank 200 code files changed. Oh my god.

13:44.51 James Wow.

13:44.77 Frank But you know what I'm noticing a lot of in this, James? The little words. Mac OS.

13:49.99 James Want some Mac OS?

13:50.19 Frank So um that's. Pretty hot. So not only is it just... mobile stuff, but it looks like it's the desktop stuff too.

13:59.37 James Mm hmm.

13:59.57 Frank um we're gonna have to do oh yeah look there's app kit nativeui .appkit .cs. It's right in there, James. Oh my God.

14:07.42 James And there.

14:08.25 Frank It's like Christmas. it's Christmas in August. I'm really excited. i I wish you had told me about this two days ago so I could be more prepared for it for the podcast. So we'll have to come back and revisit this once I've had a chance to actually play with it.

14:23.49 James What a...

14:23.38 Frank Because honestly, I've kind of given up on DevFlow.

14:25.83 James Yeah.

14:26.03 Frank I was mobile canvas all the way.

14:28.41 James Hmm.

14:28.64 Frank ah So now I'm curious. I'm really curious what the overlap is between them because I know DevFlow has an MCP server also. I'm curious what one does and the other doesn't do and all that. We might need a chart. with all of Jonathan's projects to know what each one does.

14:44.88 James Well, the biggest thing in general. is that i would lean towards using for all intents and purposes, everything. Dev flow because it's going to be able to expose the UI stack.

14:56.49 Frank Yeah.

14:56.34 James to it so i think that's what's interesting and there's definitely an overlap but i do think it makes sense like this is a very dot netty thing still you're installing into your Dot net application.

15:06.24 James I mean, even GTK and WPF support.

15:07.05 Frank Yep.

15:08.04 James So I'm just saying it's got a little li bit of everything. So it's in, in there. Whereas. the canvas really is like generic everyone all up so the The slice though of overlap.

15:16.67 Frank Mm hmm.

15:18.30 James is going to be there but i will say the mcp tools inside the canvas the mobile canvas are much smaller than the ones that are in the maui dev flow there's like a bajillion

15:26.18 Frank Right.

15:27.06 James that it can do because it can kind of do everything.

15:27.53 Frank Okay.

15:28.72 James Yeah.

15:29.69 Frank Yeah, that that makes sense because it's running in process. It can just go interrogate. everything that it needs to. um in order to answer queries and things like that, so it makes sense.

15:40.27 Frank Um. But just because you're in there doesn't mean it's doing anything smart. So it's good to know it's also doing something smart. i was I'm so excited. I feel like I'm trying to get this integrated during the pod, but I won't do that. it's um Bye.

15:54.29 Frank yeah like i said christmas so you approve this 200 files you you you code reviewed each one of those

15:54.66 James it's pretty cool Now the biggest

16:01.17 James Talks to me I haven't said that in, so Gerald and and Reth went in and they said, Oh, looking for reviews. And I was like, oh, let's I'll take a quick peek.

16:07.60 Frank Yeah.

16:09.73 James And then, you know.

16:09.88 Frank Yeah.

16:11.03 James Report it back 30 to 40 seconds. Looks good to me. Read all, read all, read all, ah all, all code reviewed. That's what I wrote.

16:18.07 Frank I totally believe you. Totally man.

16:20.59 James Yeah, as you should. The biggest thing that I'll be very fascinated about, and I need to talk to John about this, the real power of MAUI DevFlow is that there is a... built in.

16:33.33 James Agent. like an agent MD file.

16:34.97 Frank Yeah.

16:37.20 James That. instructs the agent, especially in VS Code. on using MAUI DevFlow. So what I'm fascinated about is if there is a generic.

16:44.59 Frank Fair.

16:48.21 James I'm gonna talk to him tomorrow about this. Is there a generic? Um, Maui dev flow agent that is also installed. that you can then use for your non-Maui apps.

17:00.95 James Because it needs to know about all the setup, the instructions, all those things. So I would want to either pick a... You know. An agent that's mai like dev flow or Maui dev flow. Right. And like how some sort of configuration, I mean, I guess the agent would be smart enough. If Maui do this thing, if not do this other thing, I'm not sure if I see any specific.

17:22.94 James file but maybe they put that on awesome copilot or ideally it's built into something. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but an agent plugin, perhaps um a dev flow agent plugin.

17:29.95 Frank thank

17:34.16 Frank Yeah. well Well, there's definitely um in his code called a native dev flow agent service, and that's agent .native. And that is your... Not to keep um using the word, but native.

17:45.01 Frank That's your UI kits, your app kits.

17:45.85 James Yep.

17:47.31 Frank That's not Maui. in particular. So in his instructions file he explains it to The agent. Oh god, we need more words.

17:56.13 James Oh.

17:57.21 Frank English should have more words because we can't use the word agent for everything. So in his instruction file, he's at least drawing that distinction between Maui and not Maui.

18:07.27 James Hmm.

18:07.96 Frank Now, how much the model actually obeys you and all that, that that's... To be seen. um But it's it is explained, at least in the instructions file. I don't know what other stuff is injected. um MCP servers, of course, expose tools. So I don't know. if there's an mcp tools exposed here.

18:28.91 James That's like, um...

18:30.44 Frank Or if it's all, like you say, just like skill-based and it's just going through one kind of gateway thing.

18:30.87 James Yeah.

18:35.75 Frank But at least... um in the instructions. it's It's enumerated. it's It's made very clear. you know the The Maui part is now optional.

18:44.90 James The...

18:44.70 Frank And like you said, there's GDK, WPF, AppKit, UIKit, Android.

18:49.81 James The question will be, are there instructions for your app though? you know what i mean like your agents so .md file that's like here's how to use Dev flow because this is the instructions MD file for this project.

19:03.18 James So that's what I'm, that's what I'm thinking, right?

19:04.15 Frank Oh, fair. Right, right.

19:05.63 James Like where's.

19:05.44 Frank Okay, I'm sorry. I misunderstood myself, too, there.

19:06.82 James Yeah.

19:09.02 Frank um Yeah, okay. i guess i have to keep digging through the 200 changed files to find something like that no problem where else could it be just keep searching for all markdown files or something like that

19:15.22 James Easy.

19:23.86 Frank Um, You know, and if not. I'm sure something like that can be whipped up pretty simply and then just jammed into agent's MD worst case scenario.

19:29.68 James oh yeah

19:34.05 James Yeah.

19:34.35 Frank I don't remember if MCP servers can add. global system prompts. I don't think they can. I think they can only add tools.

19:43.50 James I...

19:43.87 Frank so

19:44.91 James Think that in a I'm pretty sure that an agent plug-in I got you.

19:49.14 Frank Agent plugin can. Yes.

19:50.42 James Can but MCP

19:51.50 Frank Yeah.

19:52.68 James I don't think but an extension could.

19:55.22 Frank Yes. Yeah.

19:56.43 James So... If you were to inst... Ciao. I don't know and But that would be like a VS Code specific extension. And I do think that there's this momentum for like...

20:05.49 Frank Yes.

20:07.77 James moving some things out of extensions into a global area, which. I don't actually necessarily love i actually really enjoy. Like one click give me everything

20:17.01 Frank Mm hmm.

20:17.30 James you know, and I know that's what agent plugins does, but if I'm living and breathing inside of. vs code i'm almost like i really want it all to kind of one click, give me this stuff. So like when I was doing Maui work.

20:28.12 James I was like, everything was there, right? It had instructions that had the MCP servers and dev flow is all there.

20:30.86 Frank Mm hmm.

20:33.62 James The problem was when you go to an environment in which. you're not in VS codes. If you're in the CLI or in the GitHub copilot app or something else, you're like, Oh, I don't have all this stuff.

20:38.17 Frank Yeah.

20:40.99 James So you do kind of almost want it to be universal. So that's kind of a. a tricky part of how do you balance that one click easy win versus everyone gets set up and enroll, but would be nice.

20:52.13 James Is it? the the dev flow could expose an MCP. That is... Um... In it. And then it could initialize.

21:02.05 Frank Sure.

21:02.97 James You know.

21:05.24 Frank Yeah, because you keep calling the thing that's running. in the app in the app process and agent but i we need a better word for that thing.

21:12.98 James The server, the server, server.

21:12.97 Frank Cause it's more like. Yeah, it's it's it's just a thing, fetching data for the agent, the actual agent, which is the harness plus the model. Um... yeah it's it's a little tricky because like imagine we lived in the world where For example, let's say MCP had a way to inject something into the system prompt. You have so many MCPs, like your your system prompt is going to become this giant mess of who knows what.

21:37.57 Frank and skills are the general way to inject stuff into your sessions but skills mostly are a manual process you you tell the skill to execute and then it can inject all its stuff into the agent and don't necessarily want to do that over and over again

21:55.29 Frank Yeah, and and it's kind of a joke. like You can put instructions file all over the repo, and knowing which of the harnesses and agents is actually going to pick it up is kind of... baffling i i'm still switching between like three different uh coding environments on Basically per day, I'm using like three different ones. And I...

22:16.58 Frank honestly never quite know which ones are getting which mcp servers which instructions and all that so i sadly keep ending up repeating myself over and over again.

22:27.07 James yeah it's It's very true. I do think it's a... It's there. balance of like simplicity where it's just like oh it just installed and then it'll like light up but then if you don't know it did then you're like okay you know and that's sort of the the balance i guess between the two and i i also

22:40.14 Frank Yeah.

22:44.03 James struggle there like in the cli for example when i Boot it up. It's like hey I found this many skills, this many MCPs, this many things. It doesn't tell me where I found them, but it's like, here's what's enabled right now in this session.

22:53.38 Frank Yeah.

22:55.84 James Whereas like in VS code. You can obviously go into the settings and you can see what's exposed for this project and what got picked up, what's local, what's global, all these things.

23:06.00 James And the Copilot app is like a little bit of... everything i think i don't know there needs to be a come to i think for this i think we will and we've talked about it for a while it's getting closer

23:09.77 Frank Mm hmm.

23:15.47 James But I'm always... I'm still in the debate. Do I want it to be in my project or do I want it to be on my machine? Because a lot of the new tools are just like on your machine.

23:22.41 Frank Yeah.

23:23.09 James And I'm like, well, I don't know if I want it all on my machine. for everything.

23:26.69 Frank Yeah, that's why that's why I always like the .vscode slash mcp .json, because then you could just specify it. but That's... sitting in a VS Code directly so directory, so obviously why Codex isn't going to pick it up or whatever. I'm not even sure if Copilot picks it up. I think Copilot does, though.

23:46.16 Frank Um, It's tricky. and all these environments you know i was about to write a tool sorry there's a little bit of a side tangent But, um... I still do a lot of my...

23:56.98 Frank kind of brainstorming and high level app development stuff and thoughts and talking through at like Chat. dot openai .com. just because I have the app on my phone, whatever. It has a cute little microphone. microphone button. I press that and now I'm talking.

24:13.16 Frank And it's surprising how much stuff I get into just one of those chats. And then I go over to VS Code and I'm just like, oh, how do I transfer all that knowledge? over to vs code or Insert your favorite framework. Copilot, Codex, whatever. Who cares? how How do I take like that stuff from one?

24:32.27 Frank agent even though it's not on agents just the chat window and moving it into an agent so that like all of a sudden it has access to like MCP tools and all that fancy stuff.

24:43.64 Frank Um... I don't have a great answer to it or that I actually started writing. the world's worst like. Remember Midnight Commander, like um Norton Commander, like moving files from different directories?

24:54.10 James Yeah.

24:56.11 Frank I kind of started writing that. I'm like, here's all your sessions in this world. chat .openai .com. Here's all your sessions in VS Code scoped to your workspace. just start dragging them over and like, you know the the

25:11.11 Frank The storage format for VS Code sessions isn't rocket science. Everything's just JSON these days. So I just started doing a nasty. very nasty conversion of like open ai's um archival format into vs code just so i could jam it right into that agent and I kind of kind of like the app.

25:34.15 Frank It's kind of a terrible idea. It's obviously a big hack. But when you are bouncing around between all these different harnesses and tools and not IDEs.

25:42.94 James oh

25:43.59 Frank It's kind of nice to just hit a button and say, here. You get this session now too. And we can continue that session or, you know, branch it, do all that kind of stuff.

25:48.83 James yeah

25:53.14 Frank So no one steal my idea.

25:53.50 James if

25:54.61 Frank I'm working on it, but it's a hack, it's a hack but I'm finding it useful.

25:55.66 James That's a good good idea.

25:59.61 James Yeah, I like it. I call it agent merge. you know, or agent.

26:01.86 Frank Thanks, Don.

26:03.03 James he did something i think

26:03.73 Frank Commander.

26:04.70 James mid agent sync Um, Agent commander. ah Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this too, because I use. Microsoft Copilot, like all over the place. And I also use GitHub Copilot. Now, the the feature I don't actually use that much.

26:17.35 James is when you go into... GitHub Copilot. on your phone or on the browser. There is a copilot button and you can.

26:25.06 Frank Yeah.

26:27.57 James You can just do a... chat.

26:30.42 Frank Sure.

26:30.35 James somehow. I think.

26:31.29 Frank Yeah. You can. and i I think I used to use it all the time, but it got a little bit weird with how they store your history and everything. I felt like it was losing some of my history.

26:40.24 James yeah

26:41.53 Frank And then when it gets associated with the project, it loses it. And then it's really frustrating. You open the copilot. app and it doesn't have any of those online agents even though they're there so they don't even sync their own um

26:54.39 James Yeah.

26:55.61 Frank groups. it's like even within the co-pilot ecosystem you kind of need to sync between them

26:56.81 James But that's what I'm... Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. like I would think that'd be cool if they could sync all up. at least if I was in there, but I'm often doing stuff at Microsoft Copilot.

27:05.02 Frank They should. Yeah.

27:08.44 James I'm like, oh yeah, I need to get that over there. How do I get it over there? I guess I could like. right-click copy all and then do, but I like your, your agent six. It's just formats. So that makes sense. I like it.

27:18.00 Frank Yeah.

27:18.30 James i like it we should ship that Ah.

27:19.84 Frank It's a little bit of a backdoor because no one publishes where they actually store that data. So you kind of have to reverse engineer everyone's app. Sadly, there's no standards for that. And you kind of got to make up some information. Anyway. I found it useful to be able to sync up all the different ones.

27:36.32 James I like it ah Last update here. Last week, we talked about homebrew versus... The App Store.

27:42.20 Frank Oh no.

27:42.19 James is Frank hates homebrew. What? I will say. Five days ago. based on our my inspiration of the pod. I started the process of putting tiny clips onto the Microsoft app store.

27:56.85 James And I worked with my friend. Get up a copilot to do so.

28:00.07 Frank Yep.

28:01.04 James And I don't know if I posted this here. I did. Okay. It's a link right above the link. and yeah it's actually really not that bad it's i i merged it in it's about six files which are mostly action files.

28:11.91 James And. You know, there's for all intents and purposes, I just created a tag and then a publish to the, the windows store and. There's just kind of like an upload script to...

28:22.79 James Get it up there. Now I needed to upload it.

28:24.31 Frank Huh?

28:25.92 James to the microsoft store i think there's like a package feed uploader thing. But I needed to go into like Azure. I need to go into the Microsoft store. There was a bunch of credentials, very much like.

28:37.61 James our good friends at Apple that make you like, get this token, get that provisioning profile, get this thing, get that other thing.

28:40.94 Frank Yeah. Yeah.

28:43.37 James So I have. ah partner IDs, tenant IDs, seller IDs, client IDs, client secrets.

28:47.11 Frank Yep.

28:48.94 James I got all these things in there. It's ready to go. And honestly, to be. In all seriousness. Like. Uh, I don't know if it was like get up copilot. I also have the win UI CLI installed. I don't know if it was like the custom agent or whatever.

29:02.46 James It honestly walked me through it in like no time at all. And the only thing that's left for me to do, the the one thing I did is I had it create a. You'll see in my docs folder, I have like, I have like Windows docs. I have like a Microsoft store listing.

29:13.74 James I do this for Apple too.

29:13.73 Frank Yeah.

29:14.58 James I'm like. create the sort of listing for me, like go tell tell me all the data I need to put in.

29:17.38 Frank Yeah, sure.

29:18.30 James It knows most of it. And it's really nice that I can tweak it. Give me the template. Um, And then I basically. It created its own. App Store package, Apex manifest to get the thing up there. Updated the instruction files. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Good to go.

29:35.16 James And yeah, I just kind of did it. And now it's just waiting on me to get the app store listing up there. So...

29:41.47 Frank Okay.

29:42.18 James Once I get the App Store listing up there, i can then I have to do a first manual publish. Then after that, I can automatically publish through my CICD.

29:50.43 Frank This is not bad at all. Like half of your um CD script is just building the project, which, you know, there's way too many options, by the way, Microsoft.

29:52.48 James No.

29:58.05 James Yeah. Yep.

30:02.12 Frank we don't need all these options. But um I went through all these options when I was trying to make um the standalone version of iCircuit for Windows. So I actually sadly know all of these options.

30:12.95 Frank They're glorious in their complexity. but then your um um your store upload part, I didn't even realize that there is a store developer CLI.

30:25.34 Frank Um... Or. yeah is there i'm sorry it might just be um a github action action um But it's...

30:33.67 James No, no, it's it's, it's MS store publish.

30:34.45 Frank so

30:36.09 James It's MS store is the CLI.

30:36.26 Frank It is, yeah.

30:37.18 James It's a CLI. Yeah.

30:38.70 Frank Yeah, it's actually a CLI.

30:40.57 James Huh.

30:40.24 Frank That's kind of cool. um I did not know that existed, to be honest. I've been... I was doing this the manual way, so I am 100 % just going to copy and paste your file here because this seems so much easier. um You don't even have to.

30:56.14 Frank I'm trying to figure out where you actually install that COI. Is it just built in on the... um on the GitHub Action Machine.

31:04.06 James um

31:05.06 Frank I think it might be. I don't know.

31:06.28 James It might just be. Oh no, it uses. So, see so you see here, it's like set up, it uses Microsoft, Microsoft store app publisher.

31:09.15 Frank set up. Yeah.

31:13.12 James the version So it's.

31:13.62 Frank So that must install it. Yeah.

31:15.17 James that must install it. So like there's actions or scripts. And yeah, so the Microsoft store developers CLI. It. It's cross-platform runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

31:25.85 James Because why not? It allows you to to access Microsoft Store APIs for both managed um MSIX and unmanaged MSI EXEs.

31:26.81 Frank Yeah.

31:33.87 James So you can get. Anything up there, UWP, 132, PWAs, Maui, whatever you want.

31:34.86 Frank Fantastic.

31:38.86 James just Put it up there. It's up there.

31:41.51 Frank Wow.

31:41.57 James It's good to go.

31:43.08 Frank uh that is a great bit of knowledge thank you for or Thank you, AI, that assisted James for figuring that out because... This is going to be so nice for me.

31:54.43 Frank Because, yeah, like you said, I already do this for um Apple and Android.

31:58.77 James Yep.

31:58.85 Frank so This would be fantastic. Do you know, can you do like... A beta? Can you do like a test flight kind of thing? Or is this always the released one when this script executes?

32:10.90 James That's a good question. um My assumption is you could probably... Oh, it' flights. Yeah, you can do flights. So you can flight it to specific areas.

32:19.47 Frank flights okay Great.

32:20.42 James I think it's called flights. I think.

32:23.23 Frank Okay.

32:23.26 James Yeah, the only the only quirk with this is I needed to install it, and I needed to install .NET 9.

32:29.29 Frank Oh my god. It didn't work with 10?

32:31.77 James No.

32:32.81 Frank That's funny.

32:33.61 James That's why I was like, no.

32:34.05 Frank Why not? They're also backwards compatible. compatible.

32:37.59 James don't know it was like nope you need you need the nine run time and i was like

32:38.91 Frank that's funny

32:42.11 James all Alright, bro.

32:42.50 Frank Okay.

32:42.84 James Whatever you want. Whatever you have to listen. Go pilot. Whatever you want, go pilot. I'll do it all you say.

32:48.34 Frank Yeah.

32:48.37 James Okay. Okay. Um...

32:49.77 Frank hey if If it's automating the upload, yes. um Absolutely.

32:53.16 James Whatever you want. Okay. um We have one listener feedback. that I'm going to try to address and hopefully it's better. So this is from Eddie. A month ago, Apologize, Eddie, from our UI .md.

33:04.66 Frank Ayari.

33:06.43 James Uh...

33:06.76 Frank oh

33:07.97 James He was complaining. There was a complaint.

33:09.87 Frank oh

33:09.82 James Filed. for Merge Conflict.

33:11.11 Frank Okay. What did I do? It's probably my fault.

33:14.53 James Ah. It only addresses one person and it's not you and it's me.

33:17.82 Frank Okay, good.

33:18.13 James Ah. It says James's audio and video aren't in sync. His video sometimes freezes halfway through and the subtitles often show. four to five lines at a time. It'd be great if you could address those issues, Eddie.

33:28.57 James I will try to adjust those issues. I will say first and foremost. Um, I have had multiple new setups and been transitioning into many different areas. And I've been trying to transition everything to Thunderbolt 5.

33:41.92 James And in so the cam link seems to have.

33:42.01 Frank Oh.

33:45.34 James On Mac specifically, not on Windows. some issue. So I am now directly... for the last few episodes, plugging it directly in. to my Mac machine for this, for my capture. So hopefully it's there.

33:57.49 James For the audio sync, you know, I don't watch the videos back before I publish them.

33:57.84 Frank Yeah.

34:00.80 James I will take a look at E at this one specifically and see what is up. The only thing I could think of is I am using. new versions of Wavelink.

34:12.36 James Now. In my wavelength, I do have turned... on Software Effects

34:20.95 Frank Oh boy.

34:21.74 James Which are there's my turn off the software effects. Is that different? How does that sound? Is that different?

34:26.67 Frank Yeah, you sound louder, but you also sound slightly more like you're inside a bathroom talking.

34:32.75 James It's because I'm in a garage. Yep. So... um I'm not sure my Mac. My MacBook. If there is anything, so I have the newer XLR dark. the doc where I have all sorts of settings that are hardware.

34:49.24 James So clip guard, low cut expander, voice tune, compressor, all these things.

34:50.06 Frank Mm hmm.

34:54.84 James They're there. Um... I will test it out. So I'll look at this one, see if it's there. I'll try to record the next one with that turned off. I haven't seen issues with it. However, it could have also been that I was doing a bunch of stuff and maybe my machine was stressed at the time when I was recording. so I'll take a look at it but normally Frank would see audio drift at the same time because it's recording it.

35:16.55 Frank Yeah.

35:16.68 James So Frank would be noticing it. there. And I did notice that one of my videos froze, but. we couldn't remember. There was one that it definitely froze because we were having issues.

35:25.56 Frank Yeah.

35:25.99 James And then there's one that like, I was like, Oh, someone mentioned it froze halfway through. And I was like, It's been fine for us. So I'm going to check it out. I'm going to reinvestigate everything. I'll go through it in there.

35:36.96 James Um... besides that crypto digger 99 loves all the dev flow stuff so hopefully They are listening here.

35:43.10 Frank More depth flow. Yeah.

35:44.48 James And then Jimmy Scott from three weeks ago on IMAX. This is the best comment because I have no idea what he's talking about. It says, Frank, the most interesting part was the last part. Tell us more. Yeah, Frank, well tell us more about the last part.

35:56.47 Frank Oh. i'll I'll go find that comment and I will report back next week. Sorry.

36:00.84 James Yeah. Timecode. Time code.

36:03.79 Frank ah

36:04.79 James Let's see. What if I go in?

36:05.56 Frank I'm sure I don't say much, so I'm sure it'll be easy to find my last thing.

36:10.24 James Oh, I think it was iCircuit Python support maybe.

36:14.74 Frank Oh, was that the last thing?

36:16.33 James Mm-hmm.

36:16.37 Frank It's pretty awesome, y 'all. It's coming out soon. iCircuit 1 .16. If I ever finish goofing off, it will actually get released. it's

36:25.79 James Yeah.

36:26.01 Frank Freaking amazing. We can talk about it again when I actually release.

36:30.38 James Yeah, and then to Uh, Dewak. Diwa, maybe. Um, They say I understand it's a podcast, but if you could screen share. That'd be better. I'll check. us out on our YouTubes. We do stuff there often But you actually, the software we use to record this podcast doesn't have the capability to do screen sharing.

36:50.08 Frank oh

36:51.15 James so

36:51.95 Frank make sure you ah add that to yours. You know, that sounds like a good feature to have.

36:55.46 James Good. i could

36:58.12 Frank I guess we could do like an OBS because it could handle an OBS camera.

36:58.54 James Yeah.

37:02.12 Frank We could get more fancy. people People probably do get tired of just looking at our faces. I can understand that.

37:08.53 James Yeah.

37:08.62 Frank So every so often I could put a... Microsoft .com homepage up instead of my face.

37:13.75 James For the- For... For the longest time, we were only an audio podcast. That's all we did for like 400 episodes.

37:18.06 Frank Mhm.

37:19.32 James And then I forced Frank. But we were always seeing each other. We would always see each other's face.

37:22.64 Frank Yeah.

37:22.80 James We just oh only did audio only. And then when YouTube released like the YouTube podcast integration, blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay, let's just. put this up there and just see how it goes.

37:31.59 Frank Yeah.

37:33.21 James so Um, We will see. We'll see what we can do.

37:38.24 Frank Well the biggest problem is I have to comb my hair and find a clean shirt every time we record now.

37:42.72 James There you go.

37:43.44 Frank No.

37:43.42 James Yeah.

37:44.50 Frank But might as well.

37:44.80 James Yeah.

37:45.64 Frank Yeah, we can we can work on our presentation.

37:45.97 James Might as well.

37:47.70 Frank That's for sure.

37:49.72 James Maybe. I don't know if we got time.

37:50.87 Frank Maybe. We can work on it, I said.

37:53.26 James We can.

37:53.56 Frank No guarantees.

37:54.59 James We can work on it. All right. Well, that's going to do it for that's all the updates I got.

37:58.51 Frank ah I have a tiny update.

38:00.98 James Oh. Okay.

38:01.68 Frank Do you remember I was um working on my cool RCA video upscaler so I can take my old 1980s videos and put them on my TV? James, I bought a new case.

38:10.19 James Yeah.

38:12.01 Frank It's the first computer case I've bought in many years.

38:12.22 James Oh.

38:14.55 Frank No one cares, but I'm excited because I haven't bought a computer case in probably 20 years. And I bought a computer case and it's an H. Tea. PC. Is that the right? thing where it goes into your entertainment system and it's fun because I i haven't bought a case in a long time.

38:26.45 James yeah

38:28.94 Frank and It was fun. I love putting computers together and I put a computer in a case. Wonderful. This would be a good time to show it. I can't can't move the camera. You'll have to take my word for it. But hey, if you haven't built a PC in a long time, go do it. It's just fun.

38:44.05 Frank And I know everything's so expensive now, but. Still worth doing.

38:47.67 James I know. I was just looking at. Oh, so HTTP. Home theater PCs, HD PCs, which is like...

38:53.04 Frank Yeah.

38:54.42 James You know, I used to have a website called Revo HTPC because Acer used to make a bunch of little tiny boxes that were like made from home theater PC.

39:00.09 Frank Hmm.

39:00.74 James In fact, they went as media center on them. They had a whole thing. We talked about my history, of my lore. That's how I got one of my jobs at Seton doing home theater PC stuff.

39:05.55 Frank Yeah.

39:08.64 James In general, it's a big home theater PC. um enthusiast. I was just explaining a plex. to the youth and uh and you know So I have Plex Pass.

39:15.73 Frank Oh yeah.

39:18.77 James I paid $50 for Plex Pass for...

39:20.69 Frank Ah, you're lucky

39:22.14 James for the unlimited lifetime. You know how much a lifetime Plex pass is right now?

39:26.72 Frank I don't want to know because I would love to have it.

39:28.58 James Yes. Guess.

39:29.72 Frank I... Couple hundred bucks, 200 bucks.

39:32.45 James $750.

39:34.95 Frank That's like a lifetime's worth.

39:38.72 James It's so much. So mine's, I guess I could sell mine and then, you know.

39:40.43 Frank It is. Yeah.

39:44.11 James Ah. I won't because I use it all the time. But yeah, Plex Pass is great.

39:48.17 Frank Mm.

39:47.77 James Now you have servers. All this stuff is fantastic. Great software. Very expensive. They want they want people to do the monthly subscription. That's how they want to get you because it used to only.

39:53.29 Frank Yeah.

39:55.12 James be Plex Pass unlimited forever. And that was the greatest deal love of all time.

39:57.16 Frank Mm hmm.

39:58.39 James And this always got more expensive. And I was like, I already locked in the $50 deal. Anyways. anyways I was just looking at Framework. I got friends at Framework, not a sponsor of the pod.

40:06.45 Frank Yeah.

40:07.75 James They just released a new Framework 12 laptop edition with a new backlit keyboard.

40:13.10 Frank Ooh, yeah.

40:12.99 James fingerprint reader and something else that they said was important. And. Everything was backwards compatible with the first one. So you could just hot swap in stuff for it, which is cool.

40:20.87 Frank Nice.

40:24.23 James And they have the new Intel core three, five, seven, whatever the new stuff is the new lakes.

40:29.99 Frank Mhm.

40:30.11 James And. Um... But... i went to go customize one i was like i'll take a little Take a little peek. feel a peak

40:37.75 Frank Yeah.

40:38.04 James And for 48 gigs of RAM. So for like. A terabyte drive it.

40:41.91 Frank Oh yeah. Don't look.

40:43.27 James It's like. Starts at $599. You're like, okay, cool.

40:45.48 Frank Oh, no. yeah Oh.

40:46.58 James right no it's the the The whole machine starts at $5 .99.

40:48.81 Frank Oh. Yeah, sure, sure.

40:50.29 James And then you're like, okay, let me.

40:52.51 Frank Add some RAM.

40:52.59 James And the deep. The eight, the default is eight gigs of Ram. and I'm like, listen.

40:56.09 Frank Yeah.

40:56.41 James You just, I can't live. with eight jigs of Ram.

40:58.95 Frank well

40:59.45 James It's impossible. So I'm going to get the Ram. I get all the Ram. The max RAM was 48 gigs of RAM.

41:04.56 Frank Okay.

41:04.91 James And it was like an extra $550. I was like. Oh my god. And then the storage options was half a...

41:09.88 Frank It's not even the worst these days.

41:11.61 James half a terabyte, terabyte, two terabyte. And I'm like, well. With all these agents running, I got to at least get a terabyte. And that was four or no. $300. I was like, Oh my God.

41:21.79 Frank Still not that bad.

41:21.74 James it's You remember?

41:23.55 Frank Hardware is so expensive now.

41:23.45 James Remember you and I?

41:25.08 Frank Mm-hmm

41:25.22 James You and I drilled holes into my storage. to delete it.

41:29.19 Frank That was like gold. We were drawing holes into gold. We didn't know it at the time.

41:32.02 James Idiots. Idiot! Let's go. I literally sold all my RAM like out of my custom built PC right before RAM again.

41:39.84 Frank Oh yeah.

41:40.72 James I sold 64 jigs of Ram for like $80.

41:42.93 Frank Oh no. You could have retired on that money. Talk about fire. ah

41:48.13 James bro It's Ah.

41:51.29 Frank Wow. I am now generating 1080p video with a neural network using a GTX 1070. Remember the old GTX 1070? Only has 8GB of RAM.

42:02.56 Frank But that's enough. Not good enough to train on anymore, but good enough to generate HD video. for my TV.

42:08.44 James Cool.

42:09.40 Frank Yeah.

42:09.36 James That's awesome. I like it

42:10.64 Frank So I hope I'll have an update two or three when I actually get it running and I'll make it an open source project if anyone wants to. up sample their VHS or something. I don't know what else anyone could possibly want this for, but it's for me.

42:24.82 James I like it Cool. All right. Anything else from you, Frank?

42:28.05 Frank Ah, that's it, James.

42:29.21 James All right. that's the update video all right let's go do for this week's merch

42:33.92 Frank And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening.

42:37.38 James Peace.