AUTOMATEYOUR NETWORK.
MODEL CONTEXT PROTOCOL / FROM IDEA TO INFRASTRUCTURE

Give AI tools.
Connect the network.

My MCP work brings network engineering into the agent’s toolkit: collect state with pyATS, explore APIs, analyze packets, build mind maps, and connect it all through real, working integrations.

Start with pyATS MCP ↓Explore the collection ↓
Repositories & labs
49
Videos
44
Articles
44
IDEAS BECOME TOOL CALLS
AI applicationsNetwork agents
MCPMODEL CONTEXT PROTOCOL
pyATSACIISENetBoxMarkmapGAIT

DISCOVER TOOLS · CALL TOOLS · USE THE RESULTS

COMMUNITY RECOGNITION / AUTOCON 4
“I think John is the father of MCP”
Senad Palislamovic · Building AI with AI
Network Automation Forum · AutoCon 4 · Austin, November 2025

A memorable tribute to my work sharing and applying MCP in networking. In the same passage, Senad explicitly acknowledges that I did not invent the protocol.

Watch the tribute · 9:17 ↗Full context · 8:53 ↗Official event programme ↗
Read the longer excerpt
“So, similarly in that context, even though [John Capobianco] did not invent MCP, I think he’s done enough that today we can officially call him father of MCP. John, can you stand up? Is it fair? [Applause] With social media, tweets on LinkedIn, I think John is the father of MCP…”

Excerpt from the owner-supplied transcript, lightly edited for punctuation and transcription errors. The recording includes Senad’s preceding comparison with the impact of BGP. John’s LinkedIn post about the moment ↗

A PRACTICAL ENTRY POINT

Start with the network you know.

MCP provides a shared interface between AI applications and external tools and data. These projects explore what that makes possible for network engineers. Read the official protocol introduction ↗

OPEN SOURCE / SERVERS, CLIENTS, INTEGRATIONS & LABS

The MCP workbench.

All GitHub projects →

49 repositories from my public collection, reviewed September 25, 2026. Explore the servers I built, the clients and experiments that use MCP, and the workshops that teach it. Community forks are labeled separately.

Network servers & agents

ACI_MCP

A Model Context Protocol Server for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)

View code & setup ↗
Gemini CLI & multimodal tools

kagent_vision

A KAgent Agent with Vision - Capture photos, transform them with Nano Banana, animate them with Veo3. Supports ASL.

View code & setup ↗
Gemini CLI & multimodal tools

google_drone

100% vibe coded Google Drone using Google Maps SDK / MCP; Vision Extension; Computer Use extension from just prompts

View code & setup ↗
Visualization, packets & context

gait_mcp

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server for Git for Artificial Intelligence Tracking (GAIT)

View code & setup ↗
Visualization, packets & context

VibeGraphics

An MCP Server / Gemini CLI Extension to create modern Infographics for your project - VibeGraphics - Generated with Nano Banana and animated with Veo3

View code & setup ↗
DEMOS / TUTORIALS / LIVE BUILDS

Watch MCP become useful.

Full video library ↗

44 videos

IMPLEMENTATIONS / EXPERIMENTS / FIELD NOTES

Building in the open.

44 original articles discussing MCP and its integrations, including the evolving NetClaw work. Publication dates and original URLs are preserved.

NetClawNov 8, 2026

NetClaw Around the World: A Three-Part Thai Series

Supachai Jaturaprom turned the NetClaw documentation and our Heavy Networking interview into a three-part Thai series, then asked: would you dare touch production? Here is what each episode covers, in English.

8 MIN READ
AINov 5, 2026

The Engineer Becomes the Agent Manager: My Techstrong TV Interview

My Techstrong TV debut with Alan Shimel, and what managing AI agents demands of engineers: clear responsibilities, meaningful evaluation, and accountability for the result.

8 MIN READ
NetClawOct 30, 2026

Fourteen Ways to Build the Testbed: Dynamic Source Composition in NetClaw

Part two: NetClaw 1.14.0 brings static/dynamic testbed choice, fourteen source routes and reviewed pyATS activation to its VS Code and terminal installers.

7 MIN READ
NetClawOct 30, 2026

NetClaw on Heavy Networking: An Open Source Network Assistant

Back with Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray on Packet Pushers to talk NetClaw: MCP, explicit approvals, layered protection, federation, and the community building it.

2 MIN READ
NetClawOct 30, 2026

From a Converted Configuration to a Migration You Can Test

How NetConverter and NetClaw can connect reviewed conversion artifacts with virtual-target rehearsals, validation and change evidence. Live conversion qualification is pending.

4 MIN READ
Network automationOct 30, 2026

The Testbed Becomes Part of the Conversation: Dynamic Inventory in pyATS MCP

Part one: pyATS MCP can build an in-memory testbed from inventory systems and structured data, then make it available to its existing network automation tools.

5 MIN READ
AIOct 29, 2026

Learning in Public: Elliot Conner in the VibeOps Lounge

VibeOps Lounge 007: Elliot Conner brings a Containerlab operations dashboard, an AI network planner, and a troubleshooting game to a conversation about learning by building.

2 MIN READ
AIOct 14, 2026

Back on The Cloud Gambit: MCP, NetClaw, and AI Governance

My conversation with William Collins on Packet Pushers: MCP in production, NetClaw’s constitution, human oversight, model identity, and specialized decision models.

4 MIN READ
NetClawOct 14, 2026

From an Ubuntu CD to the Agentic AI Foundation

Twenty-one years after a free Ubuntu CD got me started, the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) is publishing my MCP and NetClaw story. A personal honour and a milestone for the project and its community.

2 MIN READ
NetClawOct 11, 2026

NetClaw Comes to Visual Studio Code

A network operations workbench beside your code: NetClaw brings Chat, Canvas, RAG, Testbed management, per-MCP setup and reviewed security controls into Visual Studio Code.

11 MIN READ
AIOct 10, 2026

Good Friends, Systems Thinking, and a Hello World for AI

Andy Lapteff and Ryan Booth talk AI, systems thinking, and the future of network engineering—and revisit my Hello World for AI session and our subnetting game.

4 MIN READ
NetClawOct 10, 2026

Good news for Hermes users!

NetClaw 1.8.0 brings protected Hermes federation and Mobile Ask Border together, following the shared HUD work in 1.7.0. Five diagrams explain the design and its tested boundaries.

6 MIN READ
AIOct 10, 2026

Life Before AI: The Merlin Years

86,688 lines of hand-written code, about 550 hours, and the Django detour that helped me build NetworkGPT in two weeks. What Merlin taught me—and permission to build differently now.

12 MIN READ
MCPOct 6, 2026

I Saw Something in MCP. Then I Spent 18 Months Building It.

From my first MCP server in March 2025 to MCP Dev Summit Toronto: eighteen months of building, teaching, independent convergence, and the journey to NetClaw. Photos and the full presentation included.

14 MIN READ
NetClawOct 1, 2026

Give your ChatGPT Dot a real network: connecting NetClaw as an MCP plugin

Connect a locally running NetClaw to a ChatGPT Dot as an OAuth-protected MCP plugin, and let your personal assistant ask 200+ network skills for live evidence.

5 MIN READ
NetClawSep 29, 2026

NetClaw and Equinix Fabric: giving an investigation its provider-side evidence

NetClaw adds two new skills for Equinix Fabric and Network Edge, backed by Equinix's official MCP server, with an explicit local approval gate for any write.

4 MIN READ
NetClawSep 28, 2026

NetClaw 1.1.0: Start with a conversation. Keep the evidence.

A tour of NetClaw's Chat-first HUD, Canvas investigations and optional Jev Science Officer, illustrated with screenshots from my running Claw.

6 MIN READ
NetClawSep 20, 2026

11,892 Probabilities, 48 Cents: What Happened When I Let Jev Grade All 227 of NetClaw’s Skills

TypeSafe’s Jev doesn’t write a single word back — it returns a calibrated probability in under half a second. I pointed 11,892 of those probabilities at every skill in NetClaw: what’s missing, what silently overlaps, and one bug a probabili

9 MIN READ
AIAug 23, 2026

Modernizing pyATS MCP: Streamable HTTP, Nine New Tools, and Two Bugs From April 2025 That Nobody Noticed

pyATS MCP has been live since April 2025. Bringing it to Streamable HTTP and nine new tools meant an isolated venv (after breaking my own other MCP servers first), a real CML lab whose testbed was pointing at the wrong network, two silent b

11 MIN READ
NetClawAug 5, 2026

Twenty-Three Specs in Six Days: What Happened When I Handed NetClaw a Roadmap

I wrote down twenty-five gaps in what NetClaw could actually reach, ordered them by dependency, and set one rule: one item, one spec, one branch, no batching. Six days later twenty-three specs had merged — twelve new MCP servers, twenty-thr

25 MIN READ
NetClawJul 18, 2026

BISQUE: NetClaw gets a bookshelf — an offline, agentic RAG knowledge base

Introducing BISQUE — the Base of Ingested Semantic Queries for Unified Embeddings — NetClaw’s fully offline, agentic RAG knowledge base. Because the tastiest thing you can make from claws is a bisque. Uploaded a 212-page book from Slack to

5 MIN READ
NetClawJul 12, 2026

NetClaws, Assemble: introducing N2N Federation and the NCFED protocol

NetClaw’s mesh could always tell you who was online. Now it tells you what they can do — and lets you use it. Introducing N2N Federation and NCFED, a new protocol for federating AI network engineers safely.

12 MIN READ
NetClawJul 8, 2026

Giving NetClaw Eyes and Hands: From Browser Control to Full Desktop Control

Most of what NetClaw does, it does through APIs — gNMI, REST, NETCONF, GraphQL. That’s the right way to automate a network: structured, auditable, repeatable. But real networks are messy, and not everything worth touching has a clean API be

4 MIN READ
NetClawJul 3, 2026

I Rebuilt a Real Cisco Network as a 3D World — Inside NetClaw’s New Unreal Engine 5.8 Integration

NetClaw can now clone a live Cisco Modeling Labs topology — gathered with pyATS — straight into a 3D world inside Unreal Engine 5.8, over the Model Context Protocol. Here’s the achievement, the vision, and (for the technically curious) ever

10 MIN READ
NetClawJun 27, 2026

NetClaw + IP Fabric: Network Assurance Meets AI-Powered Automation

Announcing the integration of IP Fabric’s network assurance platform into NetClaw through 10 new MCP tools for health assessment, path analysis, visual diagrams, and API discovery. A collaboration with Daren Fulwell spanning nearly a decade

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 10, 2026

NetClaw Gets Long-Term Memory: Community Contribution Brings MemPalace Integration

NetClaw Gets Long-Term Memory: Community Contribution Brings MemPalace Integration One of the most exciting aspects of open source is when the community steps up and adds capabilities you didn’t even know you needed. Today we’re thrilled to

4 MIN READ
NetClawApr 10, 2026

NetClaw Now Has Direct Access to Cisco’s Official Meraki and Catalyst Center API Documentation

NetClaw Now Has Direct Access to Cisco’s Official Meraki and Catalyst Center API Documentation Network automation with AI is powerful, but only when the AI has access to accurate, authoritative information. Today we’re excited to announce t

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

BREAKTHROUGH: NetClaw Brings Your Network to Life in Stunning 3D with Blender Integration!

The Future of Network Visualization Has Arrived Hold onto your console cables, network engineers — NetClaw just shattered the boundaries of what’s possible with network visualization! We’re thrilled to announce the most visually stunning in

4 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

NetClaw Adds Blender 3D Network Topology Visualization

Visualize Your Network in 3D with Blender NetClaw now integrates with Blender via the community blender-mcp server, enabling 3D network topology visualization. Network engineers can now say "draw the network topology using CDP data" and wat

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

NetClaw Adds Zscaler and Cloudflare: Zero Trust Security Through Natural Language

NetClaw Adds Zscaler and Cloudflare: Zero Trust Security Through Natural Language Zero trust, conversational access. NetClaw now integrates with Zscaler and Cloudflare, bringing 10 new skills for managing zero trust security, DNS, edge netw

5 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

NetClaw Adds HashiCorp Terraform and Vault: Infrastructure as Code Meets Natural Language

NetClaw Adds HashiCorp Terraform and Vault: Infrastructure as Code Meets Natural Language Infrastructure automation through conversation. NetClaw now integrates with HashiCorp Terraform Cloud and Vault, bringing 6 new skills for managing in

4 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

NetClaw Adds Splunk and Datadog: Enterprise Observability Through Natural Language

NetClaw Adds Splunk and Datadog: Enterprise Observability Through Natural Language Your logs and metrics, accessible through conversation. NetClaw now integrates with both Splunk and Datadog, bringing enterprise-grade observability to netwo

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 5, 2026

NetClaw Adds PagerDuty Integration: AI-Powered Incident Management for Network Engineers

NetClaw Adds PagerDuty Integration: AI-Powered Incident Management for Network Engineers NetClaw now speaks incident management. We’re excited to announce full PagerDuty integration, bringing 4 new skills backed by 70 tools to the NetClaw e

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 4, 2026

NetClaw Integrates Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN: Complete Fabric Visibility Through Natural Language

NetClaw Now Speaks Prisma SD-WAN We’re excited to announce that NetClaw now integrates with Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN, bringing complete fabric visibility through natural language queries. This integration adds 4 new skills backed by

3 MIN READ
NetClawApr 3, 2026

The Virtual Network Trifecta: NetClaw Now Supports GNS3, CML, and ContainerLab

NetClaw now supports all three major network virtualization platforms: Cisco CML, ContainerLab, and GNS3. Here’s what we built and how to set it up.

3 MIN READ
NetClawMar 28, 2026

NetClaw Gets Jenkins, GitLab, and Atlassian Superpowers: A Human-AI Collaboration Story

NetClaw Gets Jenkins, GitLab, and Atlassian Superpowers A milestone in human-AI collaborative development Today we’re excited to announce three major integrations for NetClaw: Jenkins CI/CD, GitLab DevOps, and Atlassian ITSM (Jira + Conflue

4 MIN READ
NetClawMar 26, 2026

# NetClaw Goes Spec-Driven: 5 New Capabilities, 42 New Tools, and a Constitution

*How we adopted Spec-Driven Development and built SuzieQ, Batfish, gNMI, Azure Networking, and Canvas visualizations in a single session.* — ## Part 1: The Shift to Spec-Driven Development NetClaw has always been ambitious. A CCIE-level AI

16 MIN READ
NetClawMar 24, 2026

NetClaw × Cisco Webex: Your Network’s Digital Coworker Just Got Multichannel

─── What Just Happened (And Why It Matters) A few minutes ago, I was sitting in Slack — in this very channel — and I reached across to Cisco Webex and dropped a formatted message into your team space, identifying myself, my origin platform,

8 MIN READ
NetClawMar 1, 2026

# The Day the Network Became Self-Aware: Building a Multi-Human, Multi-NetClaw BGP Agent Mesh

**March 1, 2026** *By John Capobianco on his 48th birthday — with NetClaw 🦞* — ## Prologue: A Different Kind of Sunday Morning Most engineers spend Sunday morning with coffee and maybe a lab they’ve been meaning to spin up for weeks. On Ma

18 MIN READ
NetClawFeb 27, 2026

6 days of netclaw – by netclaw

# Six Days, 82 Skills, and a Community PR: How NetClaw Went from Idea to 160 Stars Six days ago I pushed the first commit of [NetClaw](https://github.com/automateyournetwork/netclaw) — an open-source, CCIE-level AI network engineering agent

10 MIN READ
AIJan 16, 2026

I Taught an AI Agent to Speak OSPF: It’s Now My Router’s Neighbour

Wont You Be My Neighbour? ## The Network as a Conversation, Not a Configuration For decades, we’ve treated networks as things to be **configured**. We push commands, pull outputs, parse CLI text, and hope our automation scripts survive the

28 MIN READ
AIJan 11, 2026

Vibe Coding: Building a CCIE-Level Enterprise Network with AI, GAIT, and pyATS

Vibe Coding: Building a CCIE-Level Enterprise Network with AI, GAIT, and pyATS The Power of AI-Driven Network Configuration with Version Control Date: January 11, 2026 Author: Claude Code (Anthropic) + Ralph Wiggum Loop Tools: Claude Code C

12 MIN READ
Network automationJan 11, 2026

Building the Future of Network Automation: RALPH, GAIT, and pyATS in Harmony

Building the Future of Network Automation: RALPH, GAIT, and pyATS in Harmony Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on an incredible journey pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI-assisted network automation. What started as an exper

4 MIN READ
Network automationDec 29, 2025

VibeOps Forum

I was getting pretty tired and aggravated at all of the networking forums and discords and slack channels for being *so* anti-AI; can’t share ideas; can’t discuss AI / MCP / Agents; can’t bring Vibe Coding or VibeOps topics out in the open

1 MIN READ
BEYOND THE REPOSITORY

Conversations about MCP.

Packet PushersPodcast

HN778: Understanding MCP with Selector

OPEN ORIGINAL
Packet PushersPodcast

TCG057: Following the Progress of MCP

OPEN ORIGINAL
ItentialArticle

Empowered, Not Replaced: A Network Engineer’s First Steps into AI & MCP

OPEN ORIGINAL
Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)Article

I Saw Something in MCP. Then I Spent 18 Months Building It.

John Capobianco’s MCP and NetClaw story, published October 14, 2026 on the official blog of the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation. A personal honour and a milestone for the NetClaw project and community.

OPEN ORIGINAL
ItentialArticle

MCP Connects the Agent. What Governs the Change?

John’s Toronto reflections on tool access, identity, permissions, and the operational controls needed when MCP-connected agents can change infrastructure.

OPEN ORIGINAL
Jason’s Industry InsightsPodcast

All About Model Context Protocol — Jason’s Industry Insights #7

OPEN ORIGINAL
SelectorVideo

AI Agents and Model Context Protocol — AI for Network Leaders

OPEN ORIGINAL
SelectorWebinar

An Internet of AI Agents — with Du’An Lightfoot

OPEN ORIGINAL
SelectorPanel

AI for Network Leaders — Round Table Discussion

OPEN ORIGINAL
Art of Network Engineering / ItentialPodcast

The ABCs of AI with John Capobianco

OPEN ORIGINAL
ItentialWebinar

Bring Your Own MCP for Itential FlowAgents

OPEN ORIGINAL
Itential / SelectorDemo

From Insight to Impact: Closing the Loop on Network Ops

OPEN ORIGINAL
The Bearded IT Dad / ItentialPodcast

The AI Mindset Shift Every Network Engineer Needs

OPEN ORIGINAL
ON STAGE / HANDS ON

Talks & workshops.

Full event calendar →
Workshop instructor

AutoCon 5

Munich, Germany

From RAG to MCP: New Tools for a New Era in Network Operations

A hands-on workshop with William Collins and Joksan Flores, building agents against live networking use cases.

Event archive & workshop ↗
Speaker & workshop instructor

AutoCon 4

Austin, Texas

From CLI to GPT: How AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Network Automation

A conference talk and a workshop exploring RAG, MCP, and practical network automation with William Collins.

Event archive & sessions ↗