intro to ml finals was all calculations and no theory. this was a smart move by the professor to test if we can grok the questions, because it wasn't what we expected at all from the practice test. after that we went to have wings near our school. S went for the spicy one, everyone tried a bit of it. it's so spicy that you have to wear gloves.
went for a quick gym session and went for claude mcp hackathon. here's what reddit says about MCP. think of claude having access to tools, API, web, local machine, etc. it's one step closer to a world where agents are interacting with humans and other agents.
a few ideas i thought about.
- MCP notion for paper reading and organizing + exa for paper searching
- paste paper pdf, summarize this paper for me
- does exa search for paper title from pdf and get similar papers
- extracts key information
- MCP google maps for travel planning (map view of locations) and distances for more granular scale planning
- MCP apple script for better siri
- showcase siri vs MCP commands (mcp can perform more)
- narrow down to system control and safari stuff
i ended up working on the siri one. worked through a MCP loading bug with two anthropic employees, they were very kind. talked to the host and he didn't seem excited or interested in my idea at all, which was an early sign. hacked on the idea alone which wasn't a good idea in hindsight.
it was hard to figure out what to demo. usually in my head i can foresee what a winning demo will look like. by the end, i just wanted something presentable. i made claude setup my workspace by opening apps and playing spotify and controlling system settings like brightness, and i also made it kill all apps, with the commands "lets lock in" and "lets wind down". i also made it rename files for me in my finder. compared to the 5 winning ideas across different tracks, i realized my idea had nothing special to it.
left disappointed but made a new friend. it's always exciting talking to someone new. any day where i am able to connect with someone, and have good conversations is a good day. because at the end of the day, it's these little moments that make up our entire lives. not the big wins or the expected achievements, but the unexpected encounters and surprising little wins.