The Missing Protocol: How MCP Bridges LLMs and Data Streams

Nobody's talking about this: MCP isn't just another way to build chatbots. It's the bridge we've been missing between AI reasoning and real-time data systems. Teams build AI applications that work great in demos, but fall apart with production data.

Your agents analyze historical reports but can't tell what's happening in your Kafka streams. They're blind to schema changes and disconnected from events that matter to your business.

Instead of treating streaming platforms like black boxes, you expose them directly to your agents via MCP protocol. Suddenly, your AI doesn't just read about data - it lives inside your data flows.

Learn what becomes possible when you stop thinking about AI as an external service and start treating it as part of your streaming architecture. We'll build systems where agents subscribe to real-time events, reason about evolving schemas, and make decisions that ripple through your data platform.

Viktor Gamov is a Principal Developer Advocate at Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka. With a rich background in implementing and advocating for distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, Viktor excels in open-source technologies. He is passionate about assisting architects, developers, and operators in crafting systems that are not only low in latency and scalable but also highly available.

As a Java Champion and an esteemed speaker, Viktor is known for his insightful presentations at top industry events like JavaOne, Devoxx, Kafka Summit, and QCon. His expertise spans distributed systems, real-time data streaming, JVM, and DevOps. Viktor has co-authored "Enterprise Web Development" from O'Reilly and "Apache Kafka in Action" from Manning.

Follow Viktor on Twitter, @gamussa, to stay updated with his latest thoughts on technology, his gym and food adventures, and insights into open-source and developer advocacy.

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