Hacking Your Own AI Coding Assistant with Claude Pro and MCP

Build Your Own AI Coding Assistant: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Cursor Introduction: From Day-Long Tasks to Minutes with Claude + MCP Last week, I faced a daunting task: implementing Kerberos authentication for my Hadoop cluster on EC2. (Yes I could use EMR but it’s waaaay to expensive). For those unfamiliar, Kerberos is a complex network authentication protocol that typically requires careful configuration across multiple files and services. This would normally take me a full day of work, reading documentation, and troubleshooting errors. Instead, I spent 10 minutes setting up my MCP server with Claude, described the goal, and watched in amazement as Claude: Examined my project’s structure and existing Docker configuration Analyzed my current core-site.xml, hdfs-site.xml, and environment files Created a comprehensive implementation plan for Kerberos authentication Created all necessary configuration files (krb5.conf, modified XML configs) Built scripts for generating Kerberos ... Read full article.