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April 2-3, 2026
New York, NY
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IMPORTANT NOTE: Timing of sessions and room locations are subject to change.


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Thursday, April 2
 

12:50pm EDT

Building ChatGPT Apps: Principles for a New Kind of Interface - Elliot Garreffa, Ghost Team
Thursday April 2, 2026 12:50pm - 1:15pm EDT
ChatGPT apps aren't websites or mobile apps. They're a new primitive - lightweight tools invoked within a conversation, surfacing minimal UI to move the user forward.

Websites are destinations. Mobile apps are rich installed experiences with device access. ChatGPT apps are in-flow utilities - joining tasks already in progress. You don't own the screen or control the journey. The model decides when to invoke you.

Wrong mental model = wrong architecture.

Drawing on first-hand experience shipping ChatGPT apps for enterprise clients, we'll cover the principles separating apps that work from those that don't:

- Scoping around single, sharp intent vs building a platform inside a chat
- Where conversational interfaces add genuine value - and where you're fighting the medium
- Leveraging context and memory instead of requiring users to re-establish state
- Using ChatGPT as infrastructure vs distribution
- Testing and iterating when the model controls invocation

We'll walk through concrete implementation examples and lessons learned.
Speakers
avatar for Elliot Garreffa

Elliot Garreffa

Co-founder, Ghost Team
Elliot Garreffa is Co-founder and Head of Growth at Ghost Team, an AI-development studio building AI agents, MCP-Apps and ChatGPT Apps for enterprise B2B SaaS clients. Through his company Ghost Team he has pioneered production-grade MCP implementations for enterprise clients & built... Read More →
Thursday April 2, 2026 12:50pm - 1:15pm EDT
Broadway Ballroom South (6th Floor)
  MCP Best Practices, Apps and Agents

4:30pm EDT

When MCP Isn’t Enough: Product Decisions Behind Scalable Agent Systems - Cansu Berkem, Datadog
Thursday April 2, 2026 4:30pm - 4:55pm EDT
MCP is a strong foundation for building AI agents, enabling fast iteration, clear boundaries, and safer early deployments. But as agents move from prototypes to products customers rely on, product teams begin to hit limits around reliability, user experience, observability, and long-running workflows.

In this talk, I’ll share a product leader’s perspective on how MCP-based agent systems evolve in production. We’ll explore the product signals that indicate when MCP-only approaches start to constrain outcomes, and how teams can extend MCP-driven systems to meet higher expectations around trust, clarity, and control. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for scaling MCP-based agents from experimentation to dependable products.
Speakers
avatar for Cansu Berkem

Cansu Berkem

Director of Product Management, Datadog
Cansu Berkem is a Director of Product Management at Datadog, leading AI and Service Management platforms, and the product leader behind Bits AI, a generative AI copilot focused on building trusted, agentic AI systems in production. She has 15+ years of experience building AI, data... Read More →
Thursday April 2, 2026 4:30pm - 4:55pm EDT
Juilliard Complex (5th Floor)
  Apps and Agents
  • Audience Experience Level Beginner
  • Session Slides Yes

4:30pm EDT

MCP Vs CLIs: Why Agents Need Purpose-Built Interfaces - Sam Morrow, GitHub
Thursday April 2, 2026 4:30pm - 4:55pm EDT
You approve one sudo command (Ubuntu's default timeout is 15 minutes), so now your agent can `rm -rf /` your entire machine without asking again. You could run in a sandbox, but even there, `gh` can add a public SSH key to your account, or leak a token into the context window.

These aren't hypotheticals. Agents have deleted production databases and wiped drives using interfaces designed for humans, not autonomous AI. CLIs optimize for human ergonomics; APIs optimize for programmatic flexibility. Neither provides what agents need: structural safety boundaries, workflow context, graceful error recovery and auditable actions.

MCP can solve virtually all of these. This talk explores what breaks when agents use CLIs and APIs, and how MCP addresses these failures through protocol-level security, structured tool definitions, workflow guidance, consent flows, and registries.

We'll see why MCP offers the only sane path forward for safe agentic AI, and how it enables enterprise governance that unlocks mass corporate adoption. We'll also discuss gaps that still need addressing. You'll leave knowing exactly why "just use CLIs" is dangerous advice—and what to do instead.
Speakers
avatar for Sam Morrow

Sam Morrow

Senior Software Engineer, GitHub
Sam is a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub, where he leads development of the GitHub MCP server. He works on AI developer tools and helps shape agentic workflows at GitHub. In a past life he was also a professional drummer.
Thursday April 2, 2026 4:30pm - 4:55pm EDT
Broadway Ballroom North (6th Floor)
  Protocol in Depth
 
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