There and back again... but by I-5 or the ferry?

Justin Castilla

Living on Washington State’s peninsula offers endless beauty, nature, and commuting challenges. In this talk, I’ll share how I built an agentic AI system that creates and compares optimal routes to the mainland, factoring in ferry schedules, costs, driving distances, and live traffic. Originally a testbed for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) framework, this project now manages my travel schedule, generates expense estimates, and sends timely notifications for events. I’ll give a comprehensive overview of MCP, show how to quickly turn ideas into working agentic AI, and discuss practical integration with real-world APIs. Attendees will leave with MCP Server resources and tutorials and a roadmap for building their own agentic AI solutions. A comfortable grasp of Python functions, API calls, framework decorators, and the role of context with LLMs is recommended.

About Justin Castilla

Justin started his Software Engineering career as a Web Development Boot Camp Instructor where he developed a passion for exciting others with new concepts and empowering individuals with the tools needed to excel in their own right. As an Advocate at Redis, Justin created numerous videos breaking down Data Structures into easy-to-understand, relatable examples with real-world use cases. Now at Elastic, he has expanded into the realm of enhanced search and LLM integrations.

In his spare time, Justin enjoys hiking around the Pacific Northwest, building hobby electronics, and figuring out woodworking by hand.