Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
142254 stories
·
32 followers

RavenDB Community Talk: RavenDB & MCP

1 Share

On July 14 at 18:00 CEST, join us on Discord for COD#5, hosted by RavenDB performance wizardFederico Lois.

Based in Argentina and known for pushing RavenDB to its limits, Federico will walk us through:

• How we used GenAI to build a code analysis MCP (Model Context Protocol) server

• Why this project is different: it was built almost entirely by AI agents

• Tips for using AI agents to boost your own development velocity with RavenDB

If you’re building fast, scaling smart, or just curious how AI can do more than generate text, this is one to watch!

Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
29 seconds ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete

๐Ÿ”– Building a Bookmark Manager with AI Integration: My Journey with Model Context Protocol

1 Share

๐Ÿš€ The Problem That Started It All

Picture this: You're deep in a coding session, researching solutions across dozens of tabs, bookmarking useful resources left and right. Days later, you're trying to remember that perfect Stack Overflow answer or that brilliant documentation page you found. Sound familiar? ๐Ÿ˜…

As a SRE Engineer, I constantly juggle between AWS docs, Terraform modules, GitHub repos, and countless other resources. Traditional bookmark managers felt disconnected from my workflow, especially when I started using AI tools like Claude for development tasks.

That's when I discovered the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - a game-changer that bridges the gap between AI assistants and external tools. ๐ŸŒ‰

๐ŸŽฏ What is Model Context Protocol?

MCP is like a universal translator between AI models and external systems. Instead of manually copying and pasting information, your AI assistant can directly interact with your tools, databases, and services. Think of it as giving your AI superpowers! โšก

๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Enter: bookmark-manager-mcp

I built a bookmark management system that integrates seamlessly with Claude and other MCP-compatible clients. Here's what makes it special:

โœจ Key Features

  • ๐Ÿ“ Persistent Storage: Your bookmarks live in ~/.data/bookmarks.json - simple, portable, and version-control friendly
  • ๐Ÿท๏ธ Smart Categorization: Organize bookmarks with custom categories (mcp, aws, terraform, general, etc.)
  • ๐Ÿ” Resource Discovery: Browse bookmarks by category using MCP resources
  • ๐Ÿณ Docker Ready: One-liner deployment with Docker
  • โšก TypeScript Power: Type-safe implementation with Zod validation
  • ๐Ÿค– AI Integration: Ask Claude to manage your bookmarks naturally!

๐ŸŽช The Magic in Action

Instead of manually managing bookmarks, you can now chat with Claude:

"Add a bookmark for OpenAI docs at https://docs.openai.com in the AI category"
"Show me all my AWS-related bookmarks"
"Find that Terraform module I bookmarked last week"

And Claude handles it all! ๐ŸŽ‰

๐Ÿ”ง Technical Deep Dive

Architecture That Just Works

bookmark-manager

Why These Tech Choices? ๐Ÿค”

TypeScript + Zod: Because runtime validation saves you from 3 AM debugging sessions when someone passes malformed URLs ๐Ÿ˜ด

Docker: One command deployment across any environment. No "it works on my machine" scenarios! ๐Ÿณ

JSON Storage: Simple, readable, and easy to backup. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution ๐Ÿ“„

MCP SDK: Future-proof integration with the growing MCP ecosystem ๐ŸŒฑ

๐Ÿš€ Getting Started (It's Easier Than You Think!)

Docker

# Pull and run - that's it!
docker pull mindriftfall2infinitepiio/bookmark-manager-mcp:v1.0.0
claude mcp add bookmark-manager -- docker run \
  --rm \
  --interactive \
  --volume ~/.data:/app/.data \
  mindriftfall2infinitepiio/mcp:bookmark-manager-v1.0.0

Enterprise-Ready Backup & Sync

The project includes ready-to-use AWS S3 sync functions for enterprise environments. Your bookmarks stay safe and accessible across devices and teams! โ˜๏ธ
Use below function to copy the data from local to s3 or s3 to local: get the script from here.

# Sync local bookmarks to S3 (BYOS3 - Bring Your Own S3)
bookmark_sync_to_local_tos3()

# Sync S3 bookmarks to local
bookmark_sync_to_s3_to_local()

๐ŸŽจ Real-World Usage Examples

For DevOps Engineers ๐Ÿ‘ทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

{
  "title": "AWS EKS Best Practices",
  "url": "https://aws.github.io/aws-eks-best-practices/",
  "category": "aws"
}

For Developers ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ’ป

{
  "title": "TypeScript Handbook",
  "url": "https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/",
  "category": "typescript"
}

For AI Enthusiasts ๐Ÿค–

{
  "title": "Model Context Protocol",
  "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction",
  "category": "mcp"
}

๐ŸŒŸ Key Breakthrough Features

1. Natural Language Bookmark Management

No more right-clicking and navigating through folder hierarchies. Just tell Claude what you want, and it happens! ๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ

2. Context-Aware Recommendations

Claude can suggest relevant bookmarks based on your current conversation context. Working on AWS Lambda? It'll show your serverless bookmarks automatically! ๐ŸŽฏ

3. Seamless Backup & Sync

Added AWS S3 sync functions for backing up your bookmarks. Your data stays safe and accessible across devices! โ˜๏ธ

๐Ÿšง Challenges & Solutions

Challenge 1: Data Persistence ๐Ÿ“Š

Problem: Where to store bookmarks safely?
Solution: Local JSON file with configurable paths and Docker volume mounting as backing up the data to S3 with BYOS3(Bring your own s3)

Challenge 2: URL Validation ๐Ÿ”—

Problem: Users might input malformed URLs
Solution: Zod schema validation with helpful error messages

Challenge 3: Category Management ๐Ÿ“

Problem: How to organize bookmarks efficiently?
Solution: Dynamic category creation with MCP resource discovery

๐Ÿ”ฎ What's Next?

  • ๐Ÿ” Full-text search across bookmark titles and descriptions
  • ๐Ÿ“Š Analytics to track most-used bookmarks
  • ๐Ÿ”„ Import/Export from popular bookmark managers
  • ๐ŸŒ Web interface for visual bookmark management
  • ๐Ÿท๏ธ Tag system for more flexible organization

๐Ÿค Join the Journey

This project is open-source and ready for contributors! Whether you're interested in:

  • Adding new features ๐Ÿ†•
  • Improving documentation ๐Ÿ“–
  • Fixing bugs ๐Ÿ›
  • Sharing feedback ๐Ÿ’ฌ

Check out the GitHub repository and let's build something amazing together! ๐Ÿš€

๐ŸŽ‰ Final Thoughts

Building this bookmark manager taught me that the future of productivity tools isn't just about better UIs - it's about better integrations. When your tools can talk to each other naturally, magic happens! โœจ

The Model Context Protocol is opening doors to a new era of AI-integrated development tools. This bookmark manager is just the beginning.๐Ÿค”

Ready to revolutionize your bookmark management?
โญ Star the repo, give it a try, and let me know what you think!

Connect with me:

Happy bookmarking! ๐Ÿ”–

Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
1 minute ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete

'Firefox is Fine. The People Running It are Not'

2 Shares
"Firefox is dead to me," wrote Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols last month for The Register, complaining about everything from layoffs at Mozilla to Firefox's discontinuation of Pocket and Fakespot, its small market share, and some user complaints that the browser might be becoming slower. But a new rebuttal (also published by The Register) argues instead that Mozilla just has "a management layer that doesn't appear to understand what works for its product nor which parts of it matter most to users..." "Steven's core point is correct. Firefox is in a bit of a mess — but, seriously, not such a bad mess. You're still better off with it — or one of its forks, because this is FOSS — than pretty much any of the alternatives." Like many things, unfortunately, much of computing is run on feelings, tradition, and group loyalties, when it should use facts, evidence, and hard numbers. Don't bother saying Firefox is getting slower. It's not. It's faster than it has been in years. Phoronix, the go-to site for benchmarks on FOSS stuff, just benchmarked 21 versions, and from late 2023 to now, Firefox has steadily got faster and faster... Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It's been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose... Mozilla's leadership is directionless and flailing because it's never had to do, or be, anything else. It's never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It's no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It's role-playing being a business. Like we said, don't blame the app. You're still better off with Firefox or a fork such as Waterfox. Chrome even snoops on you when in incognito mode... One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation — one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi... Zawinski has repeatedly said: "Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?" "In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only: — Building THE reference implementation web browser, and — Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees. — There is no 3." Perhaps this is the only viable resolution. Mozilla, for all its many failings, has invented a lot of amazing tech, from Rust to Servo to the leading budget phone OS. It shouldn't be trying to capitalize on this stuff. Maybe encourage it to have semi-independent spinoffs, such as Thunderbird, and as KaiOS ought to be, and as Rust could have been. But Zawinski has the only clear vision and solution we've seen yet. Perhaps he's right, and Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
5 hours ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete

xAI and Grok apologize for โ€˜horrific behaviorโ€™

1 Share
In a series of posts on X, the AI chatbot Grok apologized for what it admitted was โ€œhorrific behavior.โ€ The posts appear to be an official statement from xAI, the Elon Musk-led company behind Grok, as opposed to an AI-generated explanation for Grokโ€™s posts. (xAI recently acquired X, where Grok is prominently featured.)
Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
5 hours ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete

Effort-Based Pricing Recap

1 Share
On June 18th, we enabled a new pricing feature called Effort-Based Pricing for all newly signed up Replit users. After monitoring usage for two weeks, we began rolling this feature out to the remaining users last week on July 2nd. In this post, we would like to share more about the rationale for the change, what we have observed so far, address some of our usersโ€™ concerns, and share how we are continuing to improve pricing. We are confident that the new Effort-Based pricing is the model that will best serve our users and enable more powerful AI tools to Replit members, however the transition to the new pricing model did not meet our standards for how we like to roll out major changes (we will discuss some examples of areas where we fell short). Therefore, we would like to offer $10 in free Replit credits to all Replit members who used the new pricing model as a way to show that we appreciate your feedback and your patience during this transition. This will automatically be applied to all active accounts that have used the new pricing model. There is nothing that users need to do to claim this credit. July 11th Incident: One example of where we fell short in our rollout of the pricing happened on July 11th between the hours of 11:26AM PDT - 5:43PM PDT. During this time, and due to an error in cost calculation, Replit checkpoint charges were being incorrectly computed and were often much larger than they should have been. After 5:43PM the fix was rolled out to production. This impacted approximately 6% of paying users. We have performed a thorough incident analysis, ensured that all charges related to the incident are refunded/credited, and have applied additional guardrails to make sure that this doesnโ€™t happen again. We apologize for this July 11th incident and we thank our community members for helping us identify this issue. We were able to determine exactly who was impacted, by how much, and will automatically issue refunds or credits to any user that was impacted by this error. There is nothing that these users need to do to initiate the refund. The total cost of all impacted checkpoints will be reimbursed. Impacted users will also receive an email explaining what has happened. These refunds will be in addition to the additional $10 in credits that we are offering to all active Replit members who have been using the new Effort-Based Pricing.

Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
5 hours ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete

Tech Nostalgia: Commodore is Back, and so is the C64!

1 Share

Commodore announced its first new computer in over 30 years, the Commodore 64 Ultimate. You can pre-order it now, with pricing starting at $299.

The post Tech Nostalgia: Commodore is Back, and so is the C64! appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Read the whole story
alvinashcraft
5 hours ago
reply
Pennsylvania, USA
Share this story
Delete
Next Page of Stories