From Chatbots to Coordinators

For the past few years, the industry line has been "add a chatbot to your app." That era is ending. The next one: add your app to the chatbot. Users don't want to visit five different apps and re-explain themselves five times. They want one assistant that coordinates across services—which requires a standard protocol everyone can plug into, not just the big players with bespoke integrations.

That idea drove Kent C. Dodds' major professional pivot in 2025: moving focus from EpicReact/EpicWeb toward EpicAI and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It was a year of building MCP servers for production, launching new workshops, and rethinking how users interact with software—plus welcoming a sixth child.

The "Jarvis" Moment

The shift didn't come out of nowhere. A long drive to React Conf 2024 with Ryan Florence, full of conversations about React and the future of user interaction, planted the seed. Evan Bacon's demo at the conference showed that asking an AI questions and getting text back is neat—but the better experience is when the response is interactive: native UI, not paragraphs.

Months later, after Epic Web Conf 2025, a conversation with Florence returned to that topic. They distilled it down to one word: Jarvis. Not a chatbot, but the interface itself—something that knows you, keeps context, and can do things. Florence mentioned MCP, and something clicked.

EpicAI: Building for the MCP Era

In March, EpicAI.pro launched. What started as "this is important" quickly became "this is definitely important." The effort centered on helping people build real MCP servers that can stand up in production, and showing what MCP unlocks when paired with great UI. Highlights included a steady stream of posts, multiple MCP workshops, and a self-paced workshop, Epic MCP: From Scratch to Production.

The direction keeps getting validated. Skeptics exist outside the MCP community, but the right players are participating—and 2026 looks set for an explosion of MCP-powered apps, driven largely by ChatGPT's adoption of MCP Apps.

Epicshop Gets a CLI

A big part of making EpicAI and Epic Web content usable is the Epic Workshop App (epicshop). Through contributions from the community, Copilot, and Cursor, it saw major improvements in 2025—the biggest being the new CLI experience. The CLI was renamed to epicshop, commands were flattened and simplified, and much of the workflow became interactive: picking workshops and subcommands, opening the workshop in your editor, choosing custom clone destinations, and better guidance messages with cross-platform polish, especially on Windows. Running npx epicshop now manages everything.

The app itself also leveled up: improved error handling, better update flows, quality-of-life shortcuts, richer "presence" information, and MCP server improvements. The full release notes live in the epicshop repo.

Epic Stack Keeps Moving

Despite the pivot, the Epic Stack progressed significantly in 2025. Key releases included moving to React Router v7, adding passkeys, and shipping security and performance improvements. Infrastructure changed too: image storage moved to Tigris with image optimization via openimg, the stack upgraded to Tailwind v4, and later the routing migrated from remix-flat-routes to react-router-auto-routes, adding react-router-devtools along the way. All release notes are available in the Epic Stack releases page.

Epic Web Conf 2025: The Event That Won't Return

Epic Web Conf 2025 ran in March in Salt Lake City with a workshop day and a conference day. Talks and photos were released in May.

The event lost money. Dodds described being gutted that he can't run it again for the foreseeable future. The reasons boil down to focus and finances: he can't split his attention and can't keep absorbing losses. He loves running events, but commitment has to be responsible. Last year's conf photos were also posted, making up for a missed 2024 review.

A Camp Cancelled, a Camp Improvised

Epic Web Camp made its debut in 2024 as a singular, memorable in-person event. A follow-up was planned for 2025, but it had to be scrapped. The reasons mirror those behind the conference shutdown: diminishing focus over the course of the year and a need to avoid absorbing financial losses. While both decisions were pragmatic, calling off the camp stung a bit more—the format fostered a particularly strong sense of community and connection.

Rather than let the venue go unused, Kent organized an unofficial community meet-up at the same location during the regular summer season. A handful of families joined the trip, which turned out to be a highlight of the year, resulting in new, lasting friendships and a potential model for future gatherings.

The venue itself, Aspen Grove Family Camp, is run by BYU and located in Provo Canyon, Utah. It operates as a week-long mountain retreat focused on family bonding. While children engage in supervised activities, adults have their own schedule of hiking, crafts, and social events. Meals and evening programs bring everyone together, creating a shared community atmosphere.

Given its university affiliation, the camp has a religious foundation based on Latter-Day Saint values. Sundays include optional worship services. Those who prefer to skip them can use the time for independent outdoor exploration or quiet relaxation. The camp welcomes solo attendees as well, with group lodging arranged for those coming alone.

An interest form circulated in August 2024 to gauge demand and collect emails for specific outreach. The EpicWebCamp 2025 interest sign up did not secure a spot, only indicated potential interest. The rough plan was to reserve slots for August 2nd–8th, 2025, but the timeline was tight since the camp is largely booked through peak summer weeks.

For pricing: adults (19+) were $950, teens (12–18) were $835, children (9–11) were $700, children (5–8) were $600, children (3–4) were $535, and infants (0–2) were $400. A family of two adults with three children ages 1, 5, and 8 would total roughly $3,500.

This price point sat on top of standard camp pricing. A small surcharge was considered to fund matching shirts for all attendees. There was no plan to profit from the event or to secure external sponsors.

Speaking Data: 60 Days on the Road

Travel and public speaking resumed in force. Flight data for 2025 paints a clear picture:

  • Distance traveled: 58,698 miles
  • Total days: 60
  • Total trips: 16
  • Countries/regions visited: 7
  • Cities visited: 18

A handful of talks from 2025 stand out in particular. The speaker circuit heavily featured the MCP/Jarvis arc, including "The New User Interaction Model". Other notable appearances include "Interactive MCP with React Router" at Remix Jam, "Please Make Jarvis (so I don't have to)" at the MCP Developers Summit, and "React Router's take on RSC" at React Conf 2025. A complete history remains available on the talks page.

The Podcast Circuit

A range of podcast appearances filled the gaps between conference stage slots. Highlights this year included:

Additional episodes from 2025 are linked from the appearances page. These span a broad range of topics, including thinking strategies for senior engineers on The Programming Podcast, career growth lessons on Coding Adda, and an episode discussing the impact of AI on the developer job market on HTML All The Things. Two personal milestones wrapped up the podcasting year: Season 6 of Chats with Kent featured Epic Web Conf 2025 speakers, and most of Season 5 of Calls with Kent was recorded during 2025.

A Year of MCP and Big Moments

2025 was a year where the Model Context Protocol went from a side interest to a defining theme in my work. Using MCP not only made development more efficient with agents and tool-calling, but it also proved itself repeatedly. When OpenAI announced its Apps SDK in October, built on MCP, it felt like a solid vindication of the direction I had been moving. It was the clearest sign yet of where app integration is heading.

The relevance of these choices showed through several viral moments on X with conversations that resonated deeply within the developer community. Here is a look at what stayed on top in my feed and the places that made the biggest impact this year.

A shift in how we think about state

Later in the year, a discussion popped up that struck a chord: A hot take on whether it is time we stop calling it JavaScript and just call it TypeScript, especially while Oracle owns the JavaScript trademark. Beyond debates about naming, the other most popular connect this year was revolved around an old principle that gained renewed traction in 2025: “Don’t Sync State. Derive It!”

This story doesn’t end with narratives and naming. On the infrastructure side, we witnessed Shopify’s Black Friday metrics, a topic that got an enthusiastic reaction, hitting huge performance milestones. Most relevant for readers, it pushed the limits of what can be run on a very low-cost of entry, getting significant attention in a blog context after scaling the traffic.

CodeTV and the Web Dev Challenge

A complete change of pace, I made a second appearance on the CodeTV Web Dev Challenge, the entertaining series titled “No Keyboards Allowed.” It is a surprisingly fun format that saw some creative developer work under pressure and with limitations. A big thanks to Jason for having me on again this year.

Why I listen to 1,000+ hours of audio a year

The one place that brings all my listening together is Pocket Casts. Everything from audiobooks and podcasts to the scriptures feeds into this one dashboard.

For audiobooks that weren’t natively supported, I built custom software that turns them into an RSS feed, so they slot perfectly into my queue alongside podcasts. It has been the ultimate setup for making library content and sacred texts indistinguishable from a daily-updated show library.

What it yielded this year:

  • Minutes listened: 62,518 — that presents as 1,042 hours of audio content
  • Episodes consumed: 1,469

Out of all the subscriptions, the most listened-to this year remained:

On scripture specifically, notable milestones include revisiting the entire Book of Mormon, nearly finishing the Old Testament, and going through all of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Life updates

We also welcomed our sixth child in late October, which was the clear personal highlight of the year. I keep family photos off the feed, but I remain extremely grateful for my growing family. With a newborn at home, the beginning of 2026 will require even more energy and focus at home. This will heavily dictate what I say “yes” to over the coming months, especially when it comes to traveling.

2026 Plans: New Curriculum and AI updates

Looking at the year ahead, the focus is on shipping two major commitments: an intro-level TypeScript curriculum and substantial free updates to the EpicAI workshop series. Both are slated for the first half of 2026.

Intro to TypeScript Programming

A local college has approached me to develop the curriculum for their "Intro to TypeScript Programming" course. Under the arrangement, I retain 100% ownership of the intellectual property—essentially, they're commissioning a textbook they'll use in class. The college previously used EpicReact.dev in 2025 with strong results.

The key benefit is that this content won't be locked behind the college's walls. Since I keep the IP, I can make the material available to a broader audience. This aligns with a long-standing goal to produce genuinely beginner-focused material, something I've referenced in the past under the "KCD EDU" vision:

For a long time now, I've wanted to create a place where I could help get someone from 0 to hero in software development...

The course is likely to span 5 workshops, scheduled to be published on EpicWeb.dev in the first half of 2026.

Free Substantial Updates to EpicAI

I've also committed to providing substantial updates to the self-paced workshop series on EpicAI.pro in the first half of 2026—at no additional cost. This is a new type of promise for me; I've never guaranteed free substantial updates before, as I generally avoid committing my future time. However, the rapid pace of change in MCP justifies an exception.

Consequently, the first half of 2026 is going to be quite busy. My thanks go out to everyone who has supported, challenged, and built alongside this work. Onward to 2026.