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This just changed the way that MCPs are built (Postman Builder)

AI LABS • 2025-05-29 • 9:44 minutes • YouTube

🤖 AI-Generated Summary:

Why Traditional Front Ends Are Becoming Obsolete: Harnessing APIs and AI Agents with Postman’s MCP Generator

In a recent discussion on modern app development, I made a bold claim: the traditional front end is dead. This statement might seem drastic, but it stems from a profound shift in how applications are built and controlled today—primarily through APIs and AI-powered agents. Let’s dive into what this means, how APIs are central to this transformation, and how Postman’s new MCP generator tool is making it easier than ever to build AI-driven applications without the need for a conventional front end.

The Rise of APIs and AI Control in Applications

Every application you develop relies heavily on internal APIs to manage its functionality. When your app needs to pull in data from outside sources—like weather data, maps, or social media—it taps into external APIs.

Traditionally, the front end was the user’s gateway to interact with these APIs. But with recent advancements, AI agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can now take control of these APIs directly through something called MCP servers (Modular Control Protocol). These MCPs allow AI agents to operate your entire application on your behalf, effectively replacing the need for a traditional UI.

What Are MCP Servers?

MCP servers are protocols that host your internal APIs and make them directly accessible to AI agents. By integrating MCPs with AI, developers can create intelligent agents that interact with the application’s backend services seamlessly. For example, instead of building a full front end for a weather app, you could create an AI agent that fetches weather data from an MCP server and responds to voice or text commands.

You can even use libraries like MCPUs to plug MCP servers directly into your AI agents, simplifying the development process of these AI-driven applications.

External APIs Still Matter—Here’s How AI Accesses Them

While internal APIs are crucial, many apps depend on external data—think Google Maps for navigation or OpenWeather for weather updates. The challenge? How does your AI agent access these external APIs efficiently?

Enter Postman’s MCP Generator—a groundbreaking tool that allows you to generate MCP servers for any API you want, hosted locally on your machine. This means you can convert external APIs into MCP servers that your AI agents can control natively.

Getting Started with Postman’s MCP Generator

Postman is well-known as a platform for API testing, but their new MCP generator takes things to a new level. Here’s a simplified walkthrough of how to create an MCP server for an API like OpenWeather:

  1. Search for the API: Use Postman’s search feature to find the desired API documentation—Google Maps, OpenWeather, Stripe, Figma, Discord, and many more are available.

  2. Select API Requests: Choose the specific API endpoints (requests) you want to convert into MCP tools. For example, for OpenWeather, you might select current weather, weather forecast, and historical weather data endpoints.

  3. Generate MCP Server: After selecting the requests, click the generate button. Within seconds, Postman creates an MCP server for those APIs.

  4. Download and Run Locally: Postman provides a zip file containing the full codebase of the MCP server. Extract it, install dependencies using npm install, and start the server with node mcp-server.js. This runs the MCP server on your local machine.

  5. Set Environment Variables: Insert your API keys in the provided environment file to authorize requests. Postman simplifies this by automatically managing API keys within your MCP server configuration.

Testing and Integrating Your MCP Server

Postman doesn’t stop at just generating MCP servers. You can test your MCP server directly within Postman itself, ensuring everything works as expected.

Want to integrate your MCP server into an AI development environment like Cursor? You can:

  • Generate a simple MCP template in Cursor.
  • Link it to the local MCP server’s path.
  • Add your API keys in the environment file.
  • Name and save your MCP server configuration.
  • Access all the API tools seamlessly through your AI agent.

This process is applicable across various platforms, including cloud, desktop, or custom AI environments.

Real-World Use Case: AI-Powered Weather App

Imagine building an app where users give voice commands like, “What’s the weather in Birmingham, UK?” Instead of building an elaborate front end, you:

  • Use Postman to generate an MCP server for the OpenWeather API.
  • Configure an AI agent to communicate with that MCP server.
  • The AI agent calls the appropriate API tool, fetches the weather data, and responds in natural language.

This approach can be extended to any API, whether it’s social media automation with Discord and Instagram APIs or financial services via Mastercard and Stripe.

Why This Matters: The Future Is AI-Driven and API-Centric

This new paradigm eliminates the bottleneck of front-end development by empowering AI agents to control backend APIs directly. Developers can focus on building powerful MCP servers and intelligent agents that deliver personalized, dynamic experiences without traditional UI constraints.

Postman’s MCP generator opens up a vast ecosystem of APIs—ranging from design tools like Figma to social networks like X (formerly Twitter)—all ready to be transformed into MCP servers and operated by AI.

Final Thoughts

The traditional front end may not be dead in the literal sense, but its role is rapidly evolving. With AI agents controlling MCP servers that interface with internal and external APIs, the way we build and interact with applications is changing fundamentally.

If you’re a developer or tech enthusiast, experimenting with Postman’s MCP generator and AI-powered MCP agents is a fantastic way to stay ahead. The possibilities are endless—from voice-controlled apps to smart automation tools, all powered by AI and APIs working in harmony.


Interested in learning more? Subscribe to our channel for regular tutorials and updates on API-driven AI development. Let’s embrace the future where AI transforms every layer of application development.


Thank you for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts or questions in the comments below.


📝 Transcript (279 entries):

So, in one of my previous videos, I said that front end is dead. And to explain what I meant, I'm going to talk to you about APIs. Every app you build is controlled by its internal APIs. And when it needs to fetch data from external sources, it uses external APIs. These internal APIs can actually be hosted on MCP servers, which is a protocol that allows AI agents powered by large language models to control those APIs. And if they are able to control the APIs, they can effectively control the entire application. This means you no longer need a traditional front end to manage everything because AI models can now operate the whole app on your behalf. You can use the fast API MCP library to set this up. These MCPS can now be integrated directly into AI agents which you can configure inside your applications. I demonstrated a library called MCPUs where you simply plug in the MCP and the library automatically gives you an agent. In this way, you are essentially programming large language models to control your application using these MCPs. Now, when it comes to external APIs, if you are developing applications that rely heavily on outside data, you are still going to need them. For example, if your app wants to use location or navigation data from Google Maps, then it will need access to those external APIs. We are now moving toward AIdriven applications. So, the question becomes, how would your AI agent access that data? Today I want to show you a really simple way to make that happen. I'll be introducing you to Postman's new MCP generator. Postman, as you might know, is a platform used for testing APIs, but now they have introduced a powerful tool that lets you generate an MCP server for any API you want. What's even better is that the server is hosted locally, not on some remote platform. So any application you build can include the MCP server right within it. Let's search for Google Maps. Just like I mentioned earlier, you'll see there are multiple API documentation sets available for it. If we open up the core APIs, we can see a wide variety of data ready for use. For example, the air quality API contains a huge amount of information that you can access and use freely. The roads API is another great example. You can pull whatever data you need and implement it in your application without much complexity. Postman has provided a very straightforward method for setting this up. In this video, I'm going to show you how to generate an MCP server for any API you choose. The API documentation available is vast and detailed. You'll find documentation for platforms like Figma, X, and OpenAI, as well as financial APIs like those for Mastercard and Stripe. It's an incredibly wide-ranging collection. And the best part is you can generate MCP servers for any of them. Even if you do not want to integrate them into your own applications, you can still use them inside Claw Desktop where they can be operated however you see fit. So let me guide you through the entire process of what you actually need to do. First, for any API you want to convert into an MCP server, you simply begin by searching for it. If you have learned programming the traditional way, you will probably remember that one of the very first projects many of us completed while learning to work with APIs was a simple weather map application. In my own case, I used the open weather map API as part of my learning process. Right here, you can see several different types of APIs available for use. This section is focused on documentation, but the important thing is that all of these APIs are going to be converted into tools for your MCP server. If we go ahead and select all of them, each of the three requests will be turned into individual tools that belong to a single MCP server. In our case, that would be the open weather MCP server, which will now include these three tools. You can see that it shows three requests have been selected. The next step is to add them. And once that is done, you will see that the requests have been added. Now, we just need to click on the generate button. After about 10 to 30 seconds, the MCP server will be fully generated. Once it is ready, you will notice that the MCP server has been created, but it is not hosted on any remote server. This MCP server is designed to run locally on your own machine. To make that possible, they provide a zip file that contains the complete codebase for the MCP server which you can run locally. All you need to do at this point is download the zip file. You can see that the zip file has been downloaded. Now, you are going to extract the zip file and place it into any folder you prefer. I am going to move it into this folder. Since I already had the file there, I will just replace it. Now the folder has been successfully moved and I am going to open my terminal. As you can see, I am already inside my developer folder. I will navigate into the folder I just copied which is named Postman MCP server. Inside this MCP server folder, I will run the command npm install which will install all the necessary dependencies. If this part is unfamiliar, there is actually a full guide that explains everything I am doing right now. As you can see, npm install has been executed and once it completes, we are ready to run the server locally. All the dependencies have now been installed. The next command we need to run is node mcp server.js. This is a javascript file that will start our mcp server. Once that command has been run, the mcp server will be up and running. We can stop it at this point and also open it to see how it works. As you can see, it has opened successfully. Another important thing to keep in mind is that every MCP server you create will include environment variables or API keys that need to be set. Postman handles this by automatically inserting them into yourv file. All you need to do is retrieve the appropriate keys, paste them into the file, and your MCP server will be ready to use. You no longer have to pass the API key manually through the MCP server command which is a helpful feature. This is the MCP server file and this is the MCP that has been generated for us. You can go ahead and modify it however you want which is a really useful option. Now Postman has also mentioned that we can test the MCP server using Postman itself. This functionality is not limited to just the MCP servers generated by Postman. You can test any MCP server using Postman which is incredibly convenient. But what if you want to run your MCP server in cursor? I am going to show you how to do that. If you're enjoying the video, I'd really appreciate it if you could subscribe to the channel. We're aiming to hit 25,000 subscribers by the end of this month, and your support really helps. We share videos like this three times a week, so there's always something new and useful for you to check out. Before I continue, I need to get the API key. So, I am here in the Open Weather dashboard, and I have my API key available right here. Now I am going to head back into cursor open the env file and paste my API key there. Now here in cursor in the MCP servers section this is what you are going to do. First we are going to add a global MCP server. Since we do not have a template to paste at the moment I am going to ask it to generate a simple MCP template that will be used with node going forward. The template has now been generated. We do not need the environment file that came with it. So let's go ahead and remove that. You can see that the command is currently set to run with node. Next, we need to replace the path with the actual location of our MCP server. To do that, go back to your terminal. You will see the path where your MCP server is located. To get the full path, simply type the command and press enter. The output will give you the complete directory path. Inside cursor, you are going to paste that full path followed by the file name MCP server.js. For example, this is my full path and I am just adding MCPS server.js to the end of it. The command stays as node and now you can rename the server to anything you like. For example, let's name it weather MCP agent. At this point, we have the weather MCP agent created. Press command and S to save the JSON file. If you go back into your settings, you will see that the MCP server is now listed and all the tools are available. These tools include get weather history, get current weather, and get forecasted weather. There are no issues showing up which means the API key has been placed correctly and everything is being accessed without any problems. The MCP server is now running and you can follow this same approach for any other platform whether you are working with Windinssurf cloud or desktop. It will work with all of them. If you want to build agents around it, you can use the MCPUs library. This is a very powerful library that allows you to use MCP servers as agents directly in your code. For instance, if your application is based around weather information, you could add this MCP server agent into it and create a feature where a user gives a voice command with the name of a place and the app automatically returns the weather data. There is so much you can do with this. If you browse through the available options, you will notice there are a huge number of documented APIs. For example, you can use the Discord API if you are building a social media automation tool that reposts content across different platforms. Everything is already here and you do not have to build it manually. A language model can handle everything for you through the MCP server. If you run a search, you will even find an official Instagram API workspace. You can also find one for Facebook and for X as well. This is a really powerful tool and the number of things you can build with it is truly impressive. Okay, so you can clearly see that I asked it about the weather in the UK, specifically in Birmingham. It called the tool, passed in the location along with the units in which we wanted the temperature and successfully retrieved the current weather. It used the current weather tool and it responded that the temperature is 18° C. If we go and check, we can confirm that it is accurately fetching the data from the open weather API. That brings us to the end of this video. If you'd like to support the channel and help us keep making tutorials like this, you can do so by using the super thanks button below. As always, thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.