Show HN: A “Course” as an MCP Server

(mastra.ai)

209 points by codekarate 6 days ago

35 comments

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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 However, we knew videos would go out of date and be more difficult to maintain.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...)

Gorath 5 days 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.

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  • asaiyer 4 days 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.

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keeganpoppen 5 days 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…

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  • flippyhead 5 days 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.

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  • codekarate 5 days ago

    thanks for checking mastra out

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

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hofo 6 days 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?

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  • codekarate 6 days 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)

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  • jsemrau 5 days 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.

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  • djfivyvusn 5 days ago

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

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Tokumei-no-hito 4 days 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?

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  • codekarate 4 days 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

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    • Tokumei-no-hito 4 days 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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tmaly 5 days ago

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

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jcmontx 5 days ago

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

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  • thawab 5 days ago

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

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    • addandsubtract 4 days 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.

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      • runroader 4 days 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.

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        • codekarate 4 days 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

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davecyen 6 days 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.

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  • codekarate 6 days ago

    Thanks!

    I definitely remember spending time on Codecademy years ago

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ninkendo 6 days 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.

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justanotheratom 5 days ago

make a video on how to "take" this course

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  • thawab 5 days ago

    There are several videos in the link that does this.

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    • addandsubtract 4 days ago

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

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  • codekarate 4 days ago

    this is a good idea

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

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avipeltz 6 days ago

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

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  • codekarate 6 days ago

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

    later this week we will be releasing a workflows lesson

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    • nilsbunger 5 days ago

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

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