Builders lose focus 1,200 instances a day — how MCP might change that

Software program builders spend most of their time not writing code; latest trade analysis discovered that precise coding accounts for as little as 16% of builders’ working hours, with the remainder consumed by operational and supportive duties. As engineering groups are pressured to “do extra with much less” and CEOs are bragging about how a lot of their codebase is written by AI, a query stays: What’s performed to optimize the remaining 84% of the duties that engineers are engaged on?

Maintain builders the place they’re the most efficient

A serious perpetrator to developer productiveness is context switching: The fixed hopping between the ever-growing array of instruments and platforms wanted to construct and ship software program. A Harvard Enterprise Evaluate examine discovered that the common digital employee flips between functions and web sites practically 1,200 instances per day. And each interruption issues. The College of California discovered that it takes about 23 minutes to regain focus after a single interruption absolutely, and typically worse, as practically 30% of interrupted duties are by no means resumed. Context switching is definitely on the heart of DORA, probably the most in style efficiency software program improvement frameworks.

In an period the place AI-driven corporations are attempting to empower their staff to do extra with much less, past “simply” giving them entry to massive language fashions (LLMs), some traits are rising. For instance, Jarrod Ruhland, principal engineer at Brex, hypothesizes that “builders ship their highest worth when centered inside their built-in improvement setting (IDE)”. With that in thoughts, he determined to search out new methods to make this occur, and Anthropic’s new protocol could be one of many keys.

MCP: A protocol to carry context to IDEs

Coding assistants, comparable to LLM-powered IDEs like Cursor, Copilot and Windsurf, are on the heart of a developer renaissance. Their adoption pace is unseen. Cursor turned the fastest-growing SaaS in historical past, reaching $100 million ARR inside 12 months of launch, and 70% of Fortune 500 corporations use Microsoft Copilot.

However these coding assistants had been solely restricted to codebase context, which might assist builders write code quicker, however couldn’t assist with context switching. A brand new protocol is addressing this difficulty: Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP). Launched in November 2024 by Anthropic, it’s an open commonplace developed to facilitate integration between AI methods, notably LLM-based instruments, and exterior instruments and knowledge sources. The protocol is so in style that there was a 500% enhance of latest MCP servers within the final 6 months, with an estimated 7 million downloads in June,

One of the crucial impactful functions of MCP is its means to attach AI coding assistants on to the instruments builders depend on each day, streamlining workflows and dramatically lowering context switching.

Take function improvement for instance. Historically, it entails bouncing between a number of methods: Studying the ticket in a undertaking tracker, a dialog with a teammate for clarification, looking out documentation for API particulars and, lastly, opening the IDE to begin coding. Every step lives in a special tab, requiring psychological shifts that gradual builders down.

With MCP and fashionable AI assistants like Anthropic’s Claude, that complete course of can occur contained in the editor.

For instance, implementing a function all inside a coding assistant turns into:

The identical precept can apply to many different engineers workflow, as an example an incident response for SREs might seem like:

Nothing new underneath the solar

We’ve seen this sample earlier than. Over the previous decade, Slack has reworked office productiveness by changing into a hub for a whole lot of apps, enabling staff to handle a variety of duties with out leaving the chat window. Slack’s platform diminished context switching in on a regular basis workflows. 

Riot Video games, for instance, related round 1,000 Slack apps, and engineers noticed a 27% discount in time wanted to check and iterate code, a 22% quicker time to establish new bugs and a 24% enhance in function launch charge; all had been attributed to streamlining workflows and lowering the friction of tool-switching.

Now, an analogous transformation is going on in software program improvement, with AI assistants and their MCP integrations serving because the bridge to all these exterior instruments. In impact, the IDE might develop into the brand new all-in-one command heart for engineers, very similar to Slack has been for basic data employees.

MCP will not be enterprise prepared

MCP is a comparatively nascent commonplace, for instance, safety wisem MCP has no built-in authentication or permission mannequin, counting on exterior implementations which can be nonetheless evolving There’s additionally ambiguity round identification and auditing — the protocol doesn’t clearly distinguish whether or not an motion was triggered by a person or the AI itself, making accountability and entry management troublesome with out extra customized options. Lori MacVittie, distinguished engineer and chief evangelist in F5 Networks’ Workplace of the CTO, says that MCP is “breaking core safety assumptions that we’ve held for a very long time.”

One other sensible limitation arises when too many MCP instruments or servers are used concurrently, for instance, inside a coding assistant. Every MCP server advertises an inventory of instruments, with descriptions and parameters, that the AI mannequin wants to think about. Flooding the mannequin with dozens of obtainable instruments can overwhelm its context window. Efficiency degrades noticeably because the device depend grows with some IDE integrations have imposed laborious limits (round 40 instruments in Cursor IDE, or ~20 instruments for the OpenAI agent) to forestall the immediate from bloating past what the mannequin can deal with

Lastly, there isn’t a refined manner for instruments to be auto-discovered or contextually steered past itemizing all of them, so builders typically should toggle them manually or curate which instruments are lively to maintain issues working easily. Referring to that instance of Riot Video games putting in 1,000 Slack apps, we will see the way it could be unfit for enterprise utilization.

Much less swivel-chair, extra software program

The previous decade has taught us the worth of bringing work to the employee, from Slack channels that pipe in updates to “inbox zero” electronic mail methodologies and unified platform engineering dashboards. Now, with AI in our toolkit, we’ve got a chance to empower builders to be extra productive. Suppose Slack turned the hub of enterprise communication.

In that case, coding assistants are well-positioned to develop into the hub of software program creation, not simply the place code is written, however the place all of the context and collaborators coalesce. By retaining builders of their move, we take away the fixed psychological gear-shifting that has plagued engineering productiveness.

For any group that will depend on software program supply, take a tough take a look at how your builders spend their day; you could be shocked by what you discover.

Sylvain Kalache leads AI Labs at Rootly.