AI systems /
What comes after apps: MCP and the LLM operating system
No one knows what the next interface for computing will be.
We tend to imagine new hardware. Glasses, headsets or Tony Stark moving windows through the air.
I suspect the bigger change happens one layer beneath that.
Andrej Karpathy has compared the current chat interface to using an operating system through a terminal. The intelligence is there, but we still interact with it through a small text box. We may look back at chat the way we look back at command lines. Powerful, important and clearly not the final interface.
Today we work by moving between applications. Gorgias for support. Cin7 for inventory. Xero for finance. Unreal Engine for building worlds. Each system has its own interface, language and fragment of the truth.
MCP starts to change that. It gives models a standard way to access data, use tools and perform actions across external systems. The application stops being somewhere you need to go. It becomes a capability available to the intelligence layer.
Chat still feels too narrow for what comes next.
Conversation works well for expressing intent. It works poorly for showing structure, state and movement. A business is not a thread. It is a living system.
The interface could look more like a dynamic schematic. Zoom out and see sales, finance, inventory, support and production. Zoom into inventory and see products, suppliers, forecasts and stock movements. Ask why something changed and watch the system redraw itself around the answer.
You might speak to it, drag parts around, open a node or move a decision from proposed to approved. The model handles the reasoning. MCP connects the tools. The visual layer lets you see and control the system.
That feels closer to the next operating system: language for intention, a visual map for understanding and connected software for action.
The next form factor may not be a new device.
It may be a computer that finally shows us the shape of our work.
Sources: Andrej Karpathy, ‘Software Is Changing (Again)’ and OpenAI on unifying work through MCP.