Workshop: Apollo Router & MCP: A Modern Agentic Development Approach - Michael Watson, Apollo GraphQL

Session description

Join us for an intensive hands-on workshop where you'll build a complete e-commerce application stack, from GraphQL API to AI integration. We'll start by creating a robust GraphQL API using Apollo Router, covering schema design and federation best practices. Then we'll extend your GraphQL API with a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, enabling structured AI data access and tool-based interactions. This allows AI assistants to query your products, manage inventory, and process orders directly through your API.This workshop emphasizes exceptional developer experience with hot-reloading capabilities across your entire stack for rapid iteration. You'll learn real-world patterns for connecting GraphQL APIs with MCP servers, handling data flow between layers, and maintaining type safety from your database to your AI tools. Prerequisites: Familiarity with GraphQL basics. Bring a laptop with Node.js installed. By the end of this workshop, you'll be able to: Configure Apollo Router to orchestrate multiple GraphQL services into a unified graph Integrate microservices that extend and complement each other's capabilities Build and deploy a custom GraphQL API as part of your federated graph Expose any GraphQL operation as MCP tools with zero additional code, making your entire API instantly AI-accessible Understand practical use cases for AI-integrated applications in modern development workflows