Holding this document released at the end of 2025, I found myself staring blankly at the campaign-calender and available-coupons interfaces on my screen.
To be honest, this might be one of the “sexiest” pieces of code documentation I’ve seen all year. Not because it’s complex, but because it is incredibly smooth.
While every major tech giant is still trapped in the besieged city known as the “Super App,” trying to wring every drop of user attention through bloated UIs and pop-ups, McDonald’s—a burger joint—has quietly handed the backdoor keys to your AI assistant.
It’s actually quite ironic. We spend all day shouting about Web3, the Metaverse, and Spatial Computing, yet the thing that finally brings a touch of sci-fi to real life turns out to be an instruction manual on how to use JSON to “scam” a pack of fries for 9.9 yuan.
1. Deep Insight: When Burgers Start Speaking JSON
Don’t rush to GitHub to copy the Token just yet. We aren’t here to talk about how to snag that “Wukong Special Edition Coupon”; we are talking about the massive shift in logic behind it.
How did we buy fast food before?
Unlock phone -> Find App -> Wait for splash screen ad -> Close pop-up -> Click “Me” -> Rummage for coupons -> Place order.
By the end of this flow, your dopamine levels have been ground to dust.
What has McDonald’s done now? They deployed an MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server.
Simply put, it no longer treats you like a fool tapping away at a screen. Instead, it speaks directly to your AI (whether it’s Claude, Cursor, or another Agent):
- “Hey, here is today’s menu.”
- “Here are the coupons he can use.”
- “Cut the chatter, just claim them for him.”
This is the “ordering counter” of the future: no waiters, no touchscreens, just a pure stream of data racing between your AI and the merchant’s server.
This isn’t just an API. Traditional APIs are for programmers; you need to write code to call them. But MCP is for LLMs (Large Language Models).
This signifies the complete death of the interaction interface.
Users no longer need to see that carefully designed red button, nor do they need to admire that over-photoshopped burger poster. Your AI assistant directly reads available-coupons and tells you in the calmest tone: “Boss, I grabbed that 11.9 yuan McNugget coupon for you, but I suggest you skip it—your calorie quota for today only has 200 kcal left.”
This is true “decentralization.” It’s not about storing data on the blockchain, but liberating services from the prison of the App.
2. Independent Perspective: The Underrated “Service Atomization”
Many might think, “Isn’t this just a Mini-program?”
Wrong. Dead wrong. A Mini-program is an App chopped up and stuffed inside another App; it is still meant for human eyes. It still competes for your eyeballs and still requires your click cost.
This McDonald’s MCP service is achieving Service Atomization.
Please note the auto-bind-coupons tool in the documentation.
This thing is essentially a self-revolution of business logic.
Previously, merchants secretly hoped you wouldn’t find the coupon or would forget to use it—this is the profit margin of so-called “price discrimination.”
But now, McDonald’s has turned “auto-claiming coupons” into a standard interface.
What does this mean?
It means that in the age of AI intervention, the business of information asymmetry is no longer viable.
When AI can traverse all discount combinations in milliseconds, merchants playing “math games” are just humiliating themselves. So, McDonald’s simply lays its cards on the table:
“Stop calculating. Here is the lowest price. Just come and eat.”
In a consumer internet filled with traps, this kind of honesty feels as refreshing as an alien concept.
3. Industry Comparison: While Everyone Builds Cars, Someone Paves the Road
Let’s look at what other industry giants are doing.
Most retail giants are still obsessing over “private domain traffic,” desperate to bind every pore of the user to their membership systems. A certain coffee giant has so many pop-ups in their App you want to call the police; a certain e-commerce platform hides the return button deep within a maze just to make you watch one more second of a livestream.
They are all building walls.
McDonald’s, a company that sells fries, is paving roads.
It uses Streamable HTTP, standard Bearer Tokens, and adapts to hardcore developer tools like Cherry Studio and Cursor. It doesn’t try to fence you inside its App but generously walks into the AI workflow you are already accustomed to.
From self-service kiosks to AI interfaces, the core logic of this company hasn’t changed: whatever is fastest, wins.
This technical intuition truly puts many so-called “high-tech internet companies” to shame. While we are drawing grand AI strategies on PPTs, they have written interface documentation clearer than our product manuals.
4. Unfinished Thought: When AI Becomes the Gatekeeper
Of course, this isn’t entirely utopian.
If all brands become MCP-ized in the future, our AI will transform into a new, more powerful Gatekeeper.
Imagine this:
You want McDonald’s, but your AI is actually connected to a “Health Management MCP.”
You: “Order me a Big Mac.”
AI: “Detected a new product push from campaign-calender, but based on your medical report, I have automatically blocked the request and called the Salad Shop’s MCP interface for you instead.”
Or, darker still.
Bidding wars move from search engines to the AI’s context.
Whoever pays higher API call fees to the AI platform gets their Menu read first when you ask, “What should I eat for lunch?”
At that point, we’ll think we’ve escaped the control of algorithms, only to find we’ve simply swapped it for a more hidden, intelligent cage.
5. Final Words
Looking at that final line © 2025 McDonald’s in the document, I suddenly wanted to laugh.
The tech world spent ten years trying to redefine the “portal.”
It turns out, the ultimate portal is no portal.
McDonald’s has given us a fantastic demonstration: In the AI era, the best user experience is not making the user stay in your App for one extra second, but letting the user not feel your existence while still enjoying your service.
This is probably the most romantic kind of “smoke and fire” (liveliness) in the eyes of a geek.
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