Tom Sharp is the founding AI developer at brightplace, where he architects the systems that power the platform's AI Rental Advisor and brightplace Connect. He led the engineering of brightplace's MCP server, building the authentication, tool design, and integration layer that lets AI assistants search apartments, compare options, and book tours on a renter's behalf.
Tom's work sits at the intersection of AI infrastructure and product engineering. He designs the reasoning pipelines, data contracts, and compliance frameworks that ensure brightplace's AI outputs are accurate, fair, and useful, whether a renter is searching directly or through an AI agent like Claude or ChatGPT.
NewsTakeaways from building an MCP for the future of rental search. The hardest part was not the features, tools, data, or logic. It was getting clients to connect, and the real lesson is that the difference between an API and an MCP is authentication.