Show HN: A “Course” as an MCP Server

213•codekarate•8mo ago

We wanted to build a course for new Mastra devs to get started quickly. However, we knew videos would go out of date and be more difficult to maintain.

We decided to launch our "course" as an MCP server. This way your coding agent actually teaches the course content to you and can help you write the code. We think this is a really interactive way to learn.

Using an editor with MCP support (such as Cursor, Windsurf, or VSCode), your code agent will call the appropriate MCP tools which will return context for the agent. This context tries to instruct the agent that it should be teaching you the content, not just doing the work for you.

The course is still pretty experimental and some models work better than others. Code is available in the Mastra Github repo in the mcp-docs-server package (https://github.com/mastra-ai/mastra/tree/main/packages/mcp-d...)

Comments

avipeltz•8mo ago

yall have been cooking ;) does the course also go through making a workflow or just an agent?

codekarate•8mo ago

it currently only covers creating an agent, adding tools/mcp, and agent memory

later this week we will be releasing a workflows lesson

avipeltz•8mo ago

nice looking forward to it :)

nilsbunger•8mo ago

While we are talking about workflows, can you show an example of workflow integration with copilotkit?

hofo•8mo ago

Newbie here: how much of creating agents are portable from one AI platform to another? Do they mostly have the same concepts but differ slightly in implementation? Or something else?

codekarate•8mo ago

The concepts are pretty similar but this course is definitely pretty Mastra specific.

If you are looking for a more general overview on agent development, my co-founder wrote a short book (available free at https://mastra.ai/book)

jsemrau•8mo ago

Most agent frameworks implement a ReAct (Reflect->Act) pattern in the form of a loop that "reasons" until a "final_answer" has been found. Most framworks also implement some form of session cache (scratchpad), tool use, and thought logging/tracing.

While most implementations are similar they are not easily transferable.

djfivyvusn•8mo ago

MCP is portable but isn't very useful for creating agent workflows.

davecyen•8mo ago

This is really cool. I used the OG Codecademy to learn how to code, this is kind of like the next-gen version of that.

codekarate•8mo ago

Thanks!

I definitely remember spending time on Codecademy years ago

ninkendo•8mo ago

Seeing the title I had the opposite assumption of what it was referring to: I thought of the interface to getting homework, taking tests, submitting assignments, etc as an MCP server and watching an LLM fully pass a course from an online university autonomously. I’m not convinced this isn’t possible today.

keeganpoppen•8mo ago

somehow i hadn’t heard of mastra given that i’ve gone out of my way to find and try basically every framework in this vein under the sun, but i gotta say: i’m quite impressed in terms of how clean it is and how well it aligns with i would consider “real” work in this arena… so many of these frameworks try way too hard to be batteries included and/or are otherwise so simple / limited as to feel like they were made by people who don’t actually… “get” it and thus that by extension its users don’t either…

flippyhead•8mo ago

I've been using Mastra for a few months now and we've really been liking it. Team is super responsive and a lot of improvements are afoot.

codekarate•8mo ago

thanks for checking mastra out

if you do find things that need improvement, please let us know in our discord or on x!

keeganpoppen•7mo ago

will do!

hoppp•8mo ago

The website doesn't look good on mobile

codekarate•8mo ago

thanks, we will get this fixed asap

jcmontx•8mo ago

How does the course actually start? I installed it for Cursor. npm run dev. I open a playground and...?

thawab•8mo ago

Start course. It’s an mcp, talk to it like an instructor.

addandsubtract•7mo ago

3. Draw the rest of the fucking owl

This is not enough information for someone new to MCP / agents to start the course. What you actually need to point out, is that users need to type "startMastraCourse" into their IDE's agent mode to actually start the course.

runroader•7mo ago

I'm brand new to MCP and agents but was able to read the extra docs to get VSCode set up with Mastra. Then what? I only figured out the "start Mastra Course" because of their tweet where they show someone typing that into co-pilot.

There really needs to be more hand holding to get someone to the point where the course actually starts. From there I've been able to follow along alright, but it was a real battle to get to this point.

codekarate•7mo ago

i hear you, we should have added more instructions since it's a new concept (and still very experimental)

we will update the top intro video to show how to actually get into the course and add more information to the course page to make this clear

justanotheratom•8mo ago

make a video on how to "take" this course

thawab•8mo ago

There are several videos in the link that does this.

addandsubtract•7mo ago

Where?! I only see intro videos to each lesson. No actual "lesson" being shown.

codekarate•7mo ago

this is a good idea

we will update the top intro video to show how to actually get into the course

tmaly•8mo ago

This is very cool. I have to figure out a good 7B model to run on LM Studio that can interact with this.

Gorath•8mo ago

This was interesting, but continues to shatter the illusion for me that LLM based programming is vastly superior to someone not using an LLM. It consistently struggled for me to set up what it was trying to do, and had little context in helping me work through issues. I was using windsurf so maybe that was part of my issue? I gave up in part two when it got in a never ending loop trying to connect to the GitHub mcp.

asaiyer•7mo ago

We're going to make some recommendations for which models work best with the course! We've seen some different experiences based on model and IDE.

Tokumei-no-hito•7mo ago

how do you take the course? the "play introduction" button on the video at the top doesnt work (macos, brave and stock safari). i had to use js to click the button then it finally worked..

on the site there is no "begin course". the only thing you can see is the course outline and click links to intro videos.

is there a course on taking the course?

codekarate•7mo ago

ahh, thanks for flagging the browser issues

don't want to build the "meta-course" but we are going to improve the getting started instructions.

Basic steps are: 1. Copy the command on the course page in your terminal 2. Open that folder up in your editor and make sure the Mastra MCP Docs Server is available to your editor 3. Say something like "start mastra course" to your code agent and it should start working

Still very experimental though and depending on editor/model the results do vary a bit

Tokumei-no-hito•7mo ago

i suggest a hotfix to explain steps 2-3. at least 3. there's no indication anywhere of what to do.

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