I was learning about MCP servers and wanted to try using one to order a pizza. Not really doable today.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for how AI models connect with real-world services and APIs.
In practice, what I saw was various ways to get access to systems with undocumented APIs since MCP is still taking baby steps.
That led me down a rabbit hole of how messy real-world integrations still are. Most useful systems don’t have clean, open interfaces yet.
I’ve never liked the various pages for finding restaurants and making reservations. Too cluttered and confusing. So I decided to build my own interface.
There are ways to get API access to Resy and OpenTable, so I got to work. I thought a bit about the search criteria and spun up Claude Code.
Getting access to Resy wasn’t that hard. I had to grab some tokens from the browser inspector but that’s it.
OpenTable was a different beast. I got initial access working, but within minutes OpenTable’s anti-bot system flagged the traffic and shut me out. Dead end.
Rather than fight the anti-bot system, I pivoted to Google Places for broader coverage. Getting a Google Maps key was simple and free.
The app de-dupes the results. I assumed the de-dup would be hard, but Claude one-shot it.
With a little massaging of the UX/UI, I was getting good results.
No ads.
No sponsored pushes.
Nothing unneeded.
For restaurants on Resy, I can see when they have open slots and if I select one, it takes me to the Resy page ready to click.
If they aren’t on Resy, it opens the restaurant website.
My wife requested a ‘pick one for me’ option for when we are undecided. The app then uses RNG to choose a restaurant from our criteria.
Did the whole thing in a couple hours.
Currently AI agents and homebrewed apps like mine are extremely fragile solutions prone to breakage.
If businesses start supporting real APIs or MCP servers, the opportunity for better interfaces explodes.
Right now, the best interfaces are still built despite platforms, not because of them.
I called it table-scout and it’s up on GitHub as cruftbox/table-scout if you want to take a look.
