Are MCP Nodes just a Gimmick?

[kritikakapur]

Has anyone made any real, non-superficial use of MCP nodes yet? I was so excited to hear the announcement last month that I became a paid user immediately even though I’d been an n8n and Zapier paid user already. However, forget building useful workflows for interesting/nifty use-cases, even the most fundamental flows- without adding even 1 level of complexity and simply using + running the existing default MCP nodes does NOT yield results properly.

Let me share an example that is super lucid to understand- even the basic and native “Marketing Email Cleaner” Gmail MCP node flow also doesn’t work the way it should!

Sharing a screenshot

(Look at the result in the screenshot. I of course tried playing around with multiple inputs and even asked Gummie- but it acted pretty daft).

I was hoping to build some hopefully amazingggg worflows on top of and with the existing MCP nodes- feel very disappointed.

[Gumloop_Bot]

Hey @kritikakapur! If you’re reporting an issue with a flow or an error in a run, please include the run link and make sure it’s shareable so we can take a look.

1. Find your run link on the history page. Format: https://www.gumloop.com/pipeline?run_id={{your_run_id}}&workbook_id={{workbook_id}}

2. Make it shareable by clicking “Share” → ‘Anyone with the link can view’ in the top-left corner of the flow screen.
   

3. Provide details about the issue—more context helps us troubleshoot faster.

You can find your run history here: https://www.gumloop.com/history

[Donna]

Isn’t this the “fault” of the MCP server used?

[Wasay-Gumloop]

Hey @kritikakapur – You should have received an email from Max, we’d love to hop on a call, gather feedback and make things work for you.

[kritikakapur]

I did, yes! I’m very impressed with how seriously you guys take user feedback- so so cool and rare. Thank you!

A little about my ongoing projects/needs: I currently need to ship an MVP for my Mental Health Startup- a workflow I’m making for therapists + some other B2C workflows for establishing PMF. Since I’m on a deadline for the former as I’m trying to partner with an established health-tech brand based on such B2B workflows, I’m in the process of utilizing my n8n subscription so I can finish this asap(also since I’m unable to make any real use of Gumloop in any of this ).

So, give me a few days- that way I’ll have officially shipped exactly those things through n8N that I tried doing through Gumloop for an apple-to-apple comparison, thereby being in a position to give you concrete feedback! Hope that helps?

P.S. In the meantime, could you please check if the native Gmail MCP node is really not working?(as seen in the result in the screenshot) https://www.gumloop.com/pipeline?workbook_id=h8yNsTrwWf1QAUQcWocxdb

Facing similar issues with other completely basic MCP nodes that you have made natively available. Please let me know if I’m missing something.

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[Wasay-Gumloop]

Hey @kritikakapur – Yes the feedback would be great, thank you for taking out time for providing that.

As for your MCP issue:

Facing similar issues with other completely basic MCP nodes that you have made natively available.

There are no native MCP nodes available, we have native nodes like the Gmail Reader, Gmail Sender and Gmail Updater but none of them use MCP they interact with the API directly.

Did you have a MCP node natively available to you?

For your Marketing Email Cleaner node, I can’t edit that for you but the best way to debug it would be to:

• Hover hover the custom MCP node
• Click on Edit Node → This would open the Gummie editing and testing window
• In the Gummie window, click on Edit Code and re-define the prompt and have AI fix the code

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• Once the code is re-generated, you’ll have the option to test it

• Make sure to test the values by populating the input/parameter fields the AI generates for the node

• If it doesn’t work or runs into an error, you’ll have the option to fix that with Gummie

• If none of the options work, could you report that so we’ll be able to see the full trace and push a fix

Here’s a tutorial for all of this as well: Introducing MCP Nodes & Workflows in Gumloop