MCP Apps: UI in AI

UI in AI history

• The first wave of AI adoption focused on embedded chat bots inside their UI. Some companies even tried custom GPTs.
• Then came MCP, Skills, ACP and control switched to the consumer. But UI was mostly controlled by the apps of AI giants (ChatGPT, Google, Anthropic, X)

Capabilities for UI innovation

As an AI-driven company, it is expensive to compete on cheaper service alone, or to train your own model.

Luckily, in the latest MCP specification comes MCP Apps.

It is basically an HTML page inside your AI tool. Implementation is as simple as returning a resource via a ui:// path.

Why should I care?

• While adoption is still growing, MCP Apps could be the next focus for Frontend software developers
• While generic AI is mostly competing via text output, I am betting for smaller companies to leverage competition over UX.