Building MCP Apps: Challenges in UI-Chat Interaction and State Management
Agreeable_Luck9488 · reddit · 2026-08-20
Based on the experience of developing OuEstCharlie Woof, an MCP-based photo gallery, the author discusses the UX challenges of MCP Apps. MCP Apps extend the UI but blur the line between a standalone app and a chat plugin. Key difficulties identified include:
- Interaction Flow: A single prompt often triggers multiple tool calls before the UI renders successfully, requiring rich metadata to guide the model.
- State Management: Handling multiple instances of the gallery UI within a single chat session.
- Product Definition: The term "MCP App" is confusing; the author suggests "Companion App for Claude" as a better alternative.
More from coding & agent
- 电商 Chatbot 小知识库：用 MCP 还是 RAG？ — rouge818 · 2026-08-20
- Compound Engineering reduces skill size by ~71% — danshipper · 2026-08-20
- Simulating Multi-Agent Turf Wars in r/place: Only 0.49% Overwrites — infoxiao · 2026-08-20
- John Carmack: Spend More Time in Debuggers Than Writing Code — tetsuoai · 2026-08-20
- AWS AgentCore adds runtime domain and date filters for Web Search — AWS ML Blog · 2026-08-20
- Delegate Pattern in Practice: Have Fable Spawn 5 Opus Workers to Iterate UI Designs — kevinkern · 2026-08-20