Cloud Native Theater | EnvoyCon: External Processing, Internal Leverage: MCP Tool Calls... Jens Kat

This talk features Jens Kat from ING, who explores the integration of MCP tool calls to REST endpoints using Envoy's external processing capabilities. He discusses how enterprises can leverage their existing mature API ecosystems for AI agent workflows without having to rebuild them. The session highlights the implementation of an MCP server that connects a gRPC external processor to Envoy, allowing for efficient traffic handling and policy management while maintaining a thin design for maintainability and governance. Jens also emphasizes the benefits derived from using Envoy, including built-in filter statistics, access logging, and OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing, and concludes with plans to open-source their implementation for community adoption.