As teams adopt the Model Context Protocol (MCP), they often run into a new problem: tool sprawl. Every backend API turns into its own MCP server, each with separate schemas, auth, versioning, and deployment concerns. What starts as a clean integration quickly becomes hard to manage. In this talk, I'll show how GraphQL can act as a unifying layer for MCP using GraphQL capabilities like schema introspection and persisted documents. By exposing multiple backend services through a single GraphQL API and connecting it via one MCP server, LLMs gain access to a rich, strongly typed interface without an explosion of tools. We’ll walk through a practical architecture and share patterns for keeping MCP systems scalable, discoverable, and governable beyond early experiments.
IBM, Developer Experience
Roy Derks is a lifelong software developer, author and public speaker from the Netherlands. Currently chasing his dreams in Silicon Valley, California. Roy's mission is to make the world a better place through technology by inspiring developers all over the world, more specifically AI and Web Development technologies. Before jumping into Developer Advocacy and joining IBM in Product Management, he founded and worked at multiple startups.
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