Making AI Personal: Building Context-Rich AI Tools with MCP • Kris Jenkins • GOTO 2025

This presentation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025. #GOTOcon #GOTOcph https://gotocph.com Kris Jenkins - Lifelong Computer Geek and Podcast Host @krisajenkins RESOURCES https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social https://twitter.com/krisajenkins https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins https://github.com/krisajenkins http://blog.jenkster.com ABSTRACT We all have important questions about the data around us: "What should I work on this week?", "How's my side project doing?", "Is anyone waiting on me to email them?" These are perfect questions from a human perspective - natural language queries that get to the heart of what we actually want to know. But until recently, automating these kinds of questions was impossible. They're too ambiguous, they need domain-specific knowledge and external tools to even begin to form an answer. MCP changes that. By building a simple server for your personal questions, you can literally ask "What issues should I look at?" and get sensible, accurate answers. Spend a couple of hours building your own oracle, and instead of combing through Jira manually, you could be making coffee while a machine does the research for you. In this talk, we'll dive into the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - a surprisingly simple JSON-RPC mechanism that gives AI tools focused access to your data. You'll learn how to wrap existing functions or external APIs as MCP endpoints, turning any data source into something AI can query on your behalf. We'll walk through real examples of building agentic access to databases and REST APIs, discuss security considerations, and show the easiest way to build your personal MCP server from scratch. By the end, you'll have everything needed to build a personalised MCP server. You'll understand the protocol, see practical implementation patterns, and leave with ideas for automating your workload. Whatever data you have, you'll be able to create AI tools that understand your context and answer the questions that actually matter to you. [...] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 02:02 What is agentic AI? 04:57 Demo: Let's ask a question 07:30 How did that work? 09:07 How to build an MCP server 12:37 The delegated-coding approach 16:16 Testing tip 16:55 Demo 19:22 Examples 24:11 Outro Read the full abstract here: https://gotocph.com/2025/sessions/3741 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Sandy Maguire • Thinking with Types • https://leanpub.com/thinking-with-types Edwin Brady • Type-Driven Development with Idris • https://amzn.to/432GZTi Maryann Kisamore • Basics Of Apache Kafka • https://amzn.to/3tkVYFD Mitch Seymour • Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB • https://amzn.to/3HZ18wK Ted Dunning & Ellen Friedman • Streaming Architecture • https://amzn.to/3lhk3Kb Liz Rice • Container Security • https://amzn.to/3oU4iJe Neal Ford • Functional Thinking • https://amzn.to/3DdP35B Petricek & Skeet • Real-World Functional Programming • https://amzn.to/38diF4M https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #PersonalAI #AI #ContextRichAI #MCP #LLM #AgenticAI #TodayInTech #KrisJenkins CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1