Episode 51: Why We Built An MCP Server And What Broke First Vanishing Gradients podcast

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Episode 51: Why We Built an MCP Server and What Broke First

1d ago 47:41

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What does it take to actually ship LLM-powered features, and what breaks when you connect them to real production data?

In this episode, we hear from Philip Carter — then a Principal PM at Honeycomb and now a Product Management Director at Salesforce. In early 2023, he helped build one of the first LLM-powered SaaS features to ship to real users. More recently, he and his team built a production-ready MCP server.

We cover:
• How to evaluate LLM systems using human-aligned judges
• The spreadsheet-driven process behind shipping Honeycomb’s first LLM feature
• The challenges of tool usage, prompt templates, and flaky model behavior
• Where MCP shows promise, and where it breaks in the real world

If you’re working on LLMs in production, this one’s for you!

LINKS

🎓 Learn more:

Hugo's course: Building LLM Applications for Data Scientists and Software Engineers — next cohort starts July 8: https://maven.com/s/course/d56067f338

📺 Watch the video version on YouTube: YouTube link

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