Fly.io has added MCP (Model Context Protocol) support to Sprites, their disposable cloud VM product, allowing AI agents like Claude, Gemini, and Codex to spin up and manage Sprites directly. The post is candid that MCP is not the preferred integration method — the team argues CLI tools and discoverable APIs are more efficient because they reveal capabilities progressively and avoid bloating agent context with unused tool descriptions. MCP is offered as a fallback for agents that can't run shell commands. The post also advocates for giving agents real computers with persistent filesystems over stateless sandboxes, and includes guardrails like org-scoped authentication, Sprite count caps, and name prefixes to keep agent-created VMs manageable.
