“Back of the envelope” is a time-honored tech tradition where someone does a quick calculation, works out a plan, or illustrates a concept on the nearest convenient piece of paper, which was often the back of a paper envelope.
In an era over-saturated with sterile, generated pics and diagrams, I thought I’d go in the opposite direction and try to revive this tradition. With that in mind, I made these illustrations that accompany an article in r/NetFoundry: Why Claude’s new MCP Tunnel matters, and how llm-gateway, mcp-gateway, and Agora fit into the same picture.
Here are the backs of envelopes featured in that Reddit post:
Read the post to see what these back-of-the-envelope diagrams are all about!