Could someone else run your MCP server if you weren't around?
Six issues ago, this newsletter didn't exist yet. A workshop called Build Intelligent Networks with AI did, and it's why you're reading this now.
Hi there,
A bit of history before we get into today’s issue.
When we conducted the Build Intelligent Networks with AI in January, we had 150+ attendees from 30+ countries and came out as AutoCon4’s highest-rated workshop. That response is the reason The AI Network Engineer exists. There was clearly an appetite for this conversation, not just for four hours in a workshop, but every week. So we started writing.
We understood that engineers wanted to see how these ideas actually work against real network environments. How MCP skills are built. How agents should behave when they have access to tools. How to keep automation reusable instead of creating another pile of scripts only one person understands.
Six months later, the question has changed. It’s no longer “can this work”, it’s “how do I make this work reliably, without it falling over the first time something unexpected happens.”
In the upcoming session, we’re moving from raw MCP tools to composable, reusable skills, using spec-driven development to actually constrain agent behavior, and designing agentic loops that detect when they’re stuck and recover safely, all hands-on with OpenClaw and NetClaw as production frameworks,
ENGINEERING AGENTIC NETWORK OPERATIONS
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John Capobianco and William Collins are running this one live. If their names sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same two voices behind most of what we’ve covered: John’s trust ramp from Issue #1, the RAG-is-your-vars-file and MCP-is-your-Galaxy-role explainers from Issue #4, William’s “spider-web it out” approach to agent rules from Issue #3.
Cohort 2 picks up where those conversations leave off. The honest version of where most teams get stuck isn’t building an MCP server, it’s running one in production without it becoming another thing to babysit. That’s what this session is built around:
MCP skills that are reusable across your environment, instead of one-off integrations you write once and then maintain forever. Spec-driven development, which is really the production version of the “markdown files that define what the agent can and can’t do” idea from Issue #3, and the five-line job description from Issue #6, role, trigger, tools, job, escalation, except now you’re writing the spec that an agentic loop actually follows. And agentic loops designed to recover when they get stuck, rather than failing in a way nobody can diagnose.
All of it hands-on, in a live lab, with OpenClaw, NetClaw, Selector AI, Containerlab, FastMCP, and Arista cEOS. Same digital-twin philosophy John described back in Issue #1: let the agents break things here, where it doesn’t cost you anything, before they’re anywhere near production.
If Issue #4 made MCP click for you on paper, this is where you build the thing.
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ALSO WORTH A LOOK THIS MONTH
Linux, SysAdmin, and AI Workflows with Imran Afzal
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A quick second one, because it lines up with the “collection job” idea from Issue #5. Imran Afzal, one of Udemy’s best-selling Linux instructors, is running a hands-on session on ChatGPT CLI, Shell Genie, Aider, and Goose CLI, generating commands and scripts from plain English, explaining logs, and reviewing what these tools produce before you run it. If Cohort 2 is the network and agent layer, this is the Linux layer everything underneath actually runs on.
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The Network Automation Accelerator is a new 12-week DevNet Academy program that helps traditional network engineers build practical automation skills through hands-on labs, mentoring, code reviews, and a final real-world automation project. Register your interest to learn more.
The reason we keep coming back to these sessions is simple.
AI in infrastructure is no longer just a curiosity. But it also cannot be treated like a magic layer you place on top of production and hope for the best.
The teams that get value from it will be the ones that know how to scope the work, define the boundaries, test in a lab, review the output, and keep humans in control where it matters.
That was the lesson from our first Networking event, with the second one we’re just getting started
Hope to see you there.
– Packt Conferences
P.S. Engineering Agentic Network Operations is happening on June 30 at 9 AM EDT. Use code SPECIAL50 while the flash sale is live. Goes out in <48 Hours