Hey!

In the previous newsletter, I wrote to you about MCP (Model Context Protocol) and why it’s the future of AI agents.

I promised I’d test it in practice - and that’s exactly what I did! 🧪

I chose what I think is one of the most promising MCP servers, which enables connection with Google services (Gmail, Google Calendar). Why? Because most of us use these services daily.

Good news: It works! 🎉

Bad news:

1. Installation isn’t exactly “plug & play” 🔧
2. For serious use, you need a pro plan on Claude.ai (about €20/month)

On the free version, I managed to get a list of the last 5 emails, but for anything else, this happened 👇

Of course I had to test it, so I immediately bought a 1-month subscription…

And check this out:

I wrote in the chat:

“Find the first available time for a 2-hour meeting with Andrej next week and add it to the calendar.”

WOW!

It does everything instantly by itself. Or even too much. 😬

At first I didn’t believe it, but when I opened the calendar I was genuinely surprised because the event was really there.

Okay, when you give the chat permission to send emails on your behalf, you need to be careful.

I see that I always need to specify the email address or write that it shouldn’t send emails to participants, or that it should suggest options first…

Next attempt:

“Please find an email about new prompts that arrived from vesoljeidej and extract the new prompt in Slovenian.”

I don’t know, am I the only one who’s so excited?

This opens so many new doors, it’s crazy. And then there are other tools that you can immediately integrate directly into the continuation of the conversation.

Okay Primož, cool down…

So,

what have I learned?

1. Installation is challenging
   • You need some technical knowledge
   • You have to set up OAuth2 access in Google Cloud Console
   • You need to configure multiple different files
   • Definitely not suitable for beginners (at least for now)
2. But once it works…
   • You can read emails
   • Manage your calendar
   • Search through messages
   • Create email drafts

All this directly from the Claude desktop chat application. 🤯

What specifically can you do?

Some use cases:

• “Find all unread messages from today and sort them by importance”
• “Check my schedule for tomorrow”
• “Write a draft response to Janez’s message”
• “Find all messages from accounting”
• …

You could then continue each conversation by asking more detailed questions or forward responses to another tool, like saving a summary to Google Drive, Notion, or whatever you can connect with MCP.

Well, I hope you felt the “power” of these tools (MCPs). 🙂

🤔 My current opinion?

The technology is IMPRESSIVE, but it’s not yet ready for mass adoption.

We need:

1. Easier installation
2. Better documentation
3. More use cases

But! This is just the beginning. Imagine when this becomes as easy as installing an app on your phone…

If there’s interest, I’ll prepare an installation guide that will make the process easier for everyone who would like to try this. Meanwhile, I continue to test different use cases and other MCPs.

If you can think of any tool that you’d really like to access through a chat application, let me know and I’ll check what can be done at the moment.

Talk to you next time,
Primož