Everyone talks about MCP in AI, but most explanations are actually quite confusing.

In this video, I explain what MCP really is, using an ELI5 approach.

You'll understand why it matters to understand it well, what problem it solves, and how it helps AI use tools and context properly.

So what is an MCP? Let me break it down simply.

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It’s basically a bridge between an AI model and a third-party service, application, or database.

The USB & Power Outlet Analogy

Think about a USB stick. You can plug it into your iPhone, your Mac, your monitor. Why? Because it follows a universal standard that every device understands. No “wait, is this compatible?” Just plug and play.

Now think about power outlets in the EU (minus the UK). Wherever you are, France, Spain, Italy, same outlet, same plug, no adapter needed. South Korea? Same thing. You walk in, spot the outlet, plug your charger in, done.

This is exactly what MCP does.

An MCP server and an MCP client speak the same language. They follow the same protocol, expect the same format, and connect an application to an AI model without friction. No custom glue code for every integration. No reinventing the wheel every time your AI needs to talk to a new tool or service.

Why Does It Matter?

Before MCP, connecting an AI model to external tools was messy. Each integration was its own thing, with its own quirks and custom implementation.

MCP standardizes all of that. It’s the universal plug for AI integrations. Build once, connect everywhere. Simple as that.

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I’ve built many projects on my GitHub over the years that you can check out for inspiration or contribution! I’ve got plenty more content coming your way on my LinkedIn! Hit the ‘follow’ button so you are sure to not miss out! Enjoy your day! 🏝️

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

Clean code practices that separate great engineers from the rest.

This video covers key principles, tips, and habits for writing maintainable, readable, and bug-resistant code that helps you tackle bigger projects, improve delivery speed, and advance your career.

I’ve developed numerous projects on my GitHub over the years. Feel free to browse them for inspiration or to contribute! I’ve prepared more content coming your way on my LinkedIn.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

Most engineers struggle to explain their insights… In this Substack video, I show you how to make your data science results super clear and persuasive, using Jupyter Notebook and R Markdown.

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I designed numerous projects on my GitHub over the years. Feel free to browse them for inspiration or contribution!

I’ve got more content for you coming soon on my LinkedIn.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

True impact comes from much more than just writing code or simply completing tasks.

In this video, I share how to take pride in your work, embrace full responsibility, and approach every project with an AI-first, product-centric mindset. Learn how to create solutions that truly matter, stay obsessed with delivering excellence to the end-user, and focus on product quality to become the engineer who consistently delivers real value.

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

Real progress comes from doing, not overthinking. In this video you’ll see how small, consistent actions can help you grow as a software engineer and make better decisions in your work.

Look, I’ve seen so many talented engineers stuck in analysis paralysis. They’re constantly reading about the best architecture patterns, watching tutorials, planning the perfect approach... but they’re not actually building anything. And you know what? They’re not improving either.

Here’s the thing: growth happens when you’re doing, not when you’re overthinking. You learn way more from building something messy and refactoring it than from reading 10 articles about clean code. You develop better judgement from making mistakes and fixing them than from trying to avoid mistakes entirely.

Spotting what truly matters is a skill in itself, right? And you only get good at it through practice. When you’re actually building, you quickly see which decisions have big impact versus which ones don’t really matter. You can’t learn this from theory. You have to feel it.

Well... small, consistent actions compound faster than you’d think. Writing one well-tested function today, refactoring one confusing piece of code tomorrow, asking one good question in a code review the day after. These tiny improvements add up (compound) to genuine skill over weeks and months!

Taking action with clarity means you’re not just randomly trying things. You have a rough plan (doesn’t need to be perfect), you understand what you’re trying to achieve, and you’re willing to adjust as you go. But the key word is “go”. You’re moving forward, not stuck in planning mode forever!

Building habits that help you improve faster looks like this: build something small every day, even if it’s just 30 minutes. Regularly study the logic behind a project you admire. Get your work reviewed and actually apply the feedback. Refactor one small thing each time you touch old code. These aren’t dramatic, but they work.

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

TL;DR

After spending quite some time exploring various engineering topics and building impactful projects while keeping healthy habits, today I am taking a break to focus on a new chapter.

Taking a Break to Focus on What's Next

After quite some time writing about AI, research, and building with healthy habits, I'm stepping back from content creation.

What Changes

✓ All existing posts remain available

✗ No new posts will be published

✗ Comments won't be monitored

✗ Newsletter is paused

Why I'm Telling You This…

Everything I've written here was created on my own time, independently. I'm proud of this work and want to preserve it properly as I shift my focus elsewhere.

Keep Going

Don't wait for permission. Don't wait for perfect conditions. Keep learning. Keep building. Keep applying what you discover. That's where growth happens—in the doing, not the planning. Maybe I'll be back with new insights someday. Maybe not. Either way, thank you for being here.

What This Really Means to You…

* All existing posts remain available.

* No new posts will be published.

* I won’t be responding to comments.

* Newsletter is paused.

Thanks for being part of this journey!

Keep learning, researching, practicing, and growing! 🚀

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

A reflection on what genuinely helps engineers grow. It is not about knowing everything but about recognising when your approach no longer fits, adjusting your skills, and staying open to change. When you learn to adapt your habits and use the right skills at the right moment, your work becomes clearer, quicker, and far more meaningful. You start solving problems with more confidence, making better decisions, and understanding your craft in a deeper, more practical way.

Spoiler Alert: We will also discuss about CouchDB, PouchDB, and other very exciting things! ⚡️

I’ve built tons of product-centric projects on my GitHub over the years. Feel free to check them out for inspiration or jump in to contribute!

I’ve got more content coming your way on my LinkedIn.

Keep learning. Keep researching. Keep practicing. Keep growing! 🚀

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

Most side projects fade. This one didn’t. In this video, I explain how choosing meaning over hype changes how you build, why you stay consistent, and what finally makes a project worth finishing instead of abandoning halfway through.

We’ve all been there. You see a trending framework on Twitter, get excited, start a new project, build for three days, then... it just sits there. Unfinished. Forgotten. Added to the graveyard of abandoned repositories with a README and nothing else.

Here’s what I’ve learned: projects built on hype die the moment the hype fades. You start because something looks cool or you think it’ll be impressive on your portfolio. But when the initial excitement wears off and you hit the boring middle part? There’s nothing left to keep you going.

Choosing meaning over hype changes everything. When you build something that solves a real problem you care about, the motivation is completely different. You’re not building because it’s trendy. You’re building because you genuinely want this thing to exist. That deeper purpose carries you through the hard parts where most people quit.

Well... staying consistent becomes natural when the project actually matters to you. It’s not about forcing yourself to work on it or setting arbitrary goals. You just... keep coming back to it. Because you want to see it finished. Because you’re excited about using it yourself or seeing others benefit from it.

And here’s what makes a project worth finishing: it solves something real. Not theoretical. Not “this might be useful someday.” Real problems that you or someone else faces right now. When you can picture the exact person who’ll benefit from what you’re building, finishing stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling necessary.

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I’ve built many projects on my GitHub over the years. Check them out for inspiration or contribution!

I’ve got plenty more content coming your way on my LinkedIn! Hit the ‘follow’ button so you won’t miss out!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

If you feel like you’re learning slower than others…, this one is for you! I’ll share the exact mindset and structure to develop a learning loop that accelerates your progress, project after project. I used to watch other engineers pick up new technologies seemingly overnight whilst I struggled for weeks with the same concepts. It felt rubbish, honestly. Like everyone had some secret learning ability I just didn’t have.

But here’s what I discovered: fast learners aren’t magically smarter. They’ve just built better learning loops. They extract more knowledge from each project, apply it to the next one, and compound their skills faster than people who treat every project like starting from scratch.

The mindset shift is huge. Instead of “I need to learn everything about React before I start”, it becomes “I’ll learn what I need for this specific feature, build it, see what breaks, and learn from there”.

Active learning through doing beats every single time passive learning through reading.

Well… here’s what a proper learning loop looks like: You build something. You encounter problems you don’t know how to solve. You figure them out (through docs, asking questions, experimenting). You reflect on what you learnt and why it works that way. You apply that knowledge to the next thing you build. That last step is what most people skip, and it’s where the acceleration happens.

The structure matters too, right? After finishing any project (even small ones), spend 10 minutes asking yourself the following:

* What did I learn?

* What would I do differently next time?

* What patterns or concepts clicked that I can use elsewhere?

These questions turn random experiences into structured knowledge that actually sticks.

I’ve developed numerous projects on my GitHub over the years. Feel free to browse them for inspiration or to contribute! And I’ve so much more to come on my LinkedIn as well! Don’t forget to follow and stay tuned!

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Keep learning. Keep researching. Keep practicing. Keep growing! 🚀

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev

In this video, I explain why the best engineers never start by coding.

Look, I get it. You have an idea, you’re excited about it, and your fingers are itching to open your IDE and start hammering out code. I’ve done this countless times myself. But here’s the thing: that’s usually how you end up with a complete mess three weeks later, wondering why nothing works the way you imagined it would.

The best engineers? They begin with clear plans, simple sketches, and fast prototypes to understand what truly needs to be built. Not fancy over-engineered architecture diagrams or 50-page documentation that nobody will read. Just enough planning to avoid wasting weeks building completely the wrong thing.

This approach reduces wasted work massively. You catch obvious problems before writing a single line of code. You realise that feature X doesn’t actually solve the real problem when you sketch it out on paper. You see that the data flow you had in your head won’t work in practice. All of this happens before you’ve invested days into implementation that you’ll have to throw away.

It also improves product quality because you’re thinking through edge cases, user flows, and technical constraints upfront instead of discovering them when it’s too late. And it gives you a much clearer path from idea to final outcome. No more “I’ll figure it out as I go” coding sessions that lead absolutely nowhere.

In this video, I’ll break down how to plan effectively without overdoing it, how to sketch out ideas quickly (honestly, pen and paper works brilliantly for this), and how to build throwaway prototypes that answer your biggest questions before committing to a full implementation.

Because at the end of the day, the fastest way to ship something good isn’t to code first and think later. It’s to think just enough, then code with clarity and purpose. Your future self will thank you for it.

Thanks for reading The Healthy Scientist: Build Using AI With Healthy Habits 🔥! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I’ve developed numerous projects on my GitHub over the years. Feel free to browse them for inspiration or to contribute! And I’ve got more content coming your way on my LinkedIn.

Keep learning, researching, practicing, teaching, and growing! 🚀

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.pierrehenry.dev