Week 9 - Agent Memory, Tools & MCP on AI Platform Engineering Handbook

Agent Memory Systems

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1. Short-term Memory

Short-term memory refers to the information an agent needs to keep track of just within its current, ongoing task or conversation — everything that’s happened so far in this particular session, held onto just long enough to be useful for the immediate work at hand, without necessarily needing to be remembered forever afterward.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1. MCP Fundamentals

At its core, MCP is an open protocol — meaning a publicly available, standardized set of rules — that defines a consistent way for AI applications to receive context and capabilities from external systems. The word “protocol” is doing important work here: much like how HTTP is the standardized protocol that lets any web browser talk to any website regardless of who built either one, MCP aims to be a standardized way for any AI application to talk to any external tool or data source, regardless of who built either side.

Tool Calling

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1. Function Calling

Function calling is the foundational mechanism that makes tool use possible in the first place, so it’s worth understanding clearly before anything else in this section. At its heart, the idea is this: instead of a language model only being able to respond with plain, free-form text, it can also be given the ability to respond by saying, in a very specific, structured way, “I want to call this particular function, with these particular input values.”