<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Bill Easton</title><description>Essays on MCP, tool transformation, production agent systems, and the occasional security post.</description><link>https://strawgate.com/</link><language>en-us</language><item><title>From 1,200 tools to 8: reshaping OpenAPI-derived MCP servers so agents can actually use them</title><link>https://strawgate.com/writing/openapi-tool-transformation/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://strawgate.com/writing/openapi-tool-transformation/</guid><description>A dump of every OpenAPI endpoint into an MCP server is technically correct and practically useless. Here&apos;s the transformation layer I&apos;ve been building into FastMCP — and why picking the right 8 tools beats exposing all 1,200.</description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>MCP</category><category>Tool Transformation</category></item><item><title>Pull Requests Are Dead. Long Live Context.</title><link>https://strawgate.com/writing/pull-requests-are-dead-long-live-context/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://strawgate.com/writing/pull-requests-are-dead-long-live-context/</guid><description>AI made code generation cheap without making review cheap. For open source, that shifts the scarce resource from code to context.</description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>Open Source</category><category>AI</category><category>Context Engineering</category></item><item><title>Agent Builder, Beyond The Chatbox: Introducing Augmented Infrastructure</title><link>https://strawgate.com/writing/agent-builder-augmented-infrastructure/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://strawgate.com/writing/agent-builder-augmented-infrastructure/</guid><description>We built an agent that does more than talk about infrastructure. It can reach into real environments, call tools through runners, and close the loop with Elasticsearch.</description><pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>Agentic AI</category><category>Infrastructure</category><category>Elastic</category><category>MCP</category></item><item><title>Bad Tools Make Bad Agents</title><link>https://strawgate.com/writing/bad-tools-make-bad-agents/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://strawgate.com/writing/bad-tools-make-bad-agents/</guid><description>Most agent failures are not model failures. They are tool-shaping failures. If your tools are generic, leaky, or poorly scoped, your prompt turns into a compensating control system.</description><pubDate>Sat, 24 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>MCP</category><category>Tool Design</category><category>Agents</category></item><item><title>Why We Shipped Performance Presets Instead of Better Documentation</title><link>https://strawgate.com/writing/why-we-shipped-performance-presets/</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://strawgate.com/writing/why-we-shipped-performance-presets/</guid><description>Elastic Agent had accumulated a pile of tuning knobs that only experts could use well. Performance Presets were a product decision to package judgment, not just publish more YAML advice.</description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate><category>Product</category><category>Observability</category><category>Elastic Agent</category><category>Performance</category></item></channel></rss>