MASIL — Reconnecting Korean Elders to Creative Life

Inspiration What happens when the only path left is still inaccessible? MASIL began with a double exclusion. For Korean elders who live alone and can no longer leave home, the places that sustained their creative and social life become unreachable. The web may be the only path left—yet its interface creates a second barrier. Korea entered a super-aged society in 2025, when people aged 65 or older reached 20.3% of the population . The 2024 census counted 2.289 million one-person households in that age group . Meanwhile, the older-adult group scored 95.4 for digital access but only 56.2 for digital capability . A device can be within reach while the activity remains out of reach. MASIL (마실) means casually stepping out into the neighborhood—a small trip that is no longer easy for the people this project serves. Why calligraphy and Janggi? They were natural starting points: two forms of living Korean heritage sustained through practice, participation, and shared place. Calligraphy remains a mainstay of senior welfare centers, renewing the tradition whenever brush meets paper. Janggi has long served as social infrastructure. At Seoul’s Tapgol Park, a 30-year tradition gathered players and onlookers for play, debate, and conversation; removing the boards dispersed the gathering. For many Korean elders, these are more than pastimes. They give everyday life rhythm and momentum—something to practice, improve, share, and look forward to. MASIL asks whether WebMCP can turn the Agent’s access to a website into the elder’s access to the activity, allowing creative life to continue and expand without first mastering the interface. What it does MASIL is not assisted navigation. It is a live creative space where an Agent contributes through WebMCP and the elder shapes and continues the same activity. What becomes possible only when all three work together? Approach What it brings Result for the elder Voice Agent alone Understands and generates An answer outside the activity Fixed UI alone Holds visible state and valid actions Predetermined content that still requires control literacy Agent + WebMCP + Web UI Creates, interprets, holds provider truth, and connects both directions The elder creates and plays without first mastering the interface Calligraphy: imagination beyond a fixed library What changes: Their imagination—not a fixed library—defines what they can practice. Describe (Elder → Agent) — They ask for 추석 in a soft, flowing brush style. Create (Agent) — Their Agent generates that exact calligraphy reference. Place (Agent → WebMCP → Web UI) — It enters the live canvas without altering human strokes. Make it theirs (Elder → Web UI) — They write over it through air writing or direct drawing. The starting point is generated; the finished work remains theirs. Janggi: familiar words become a real match What changes: Their decades of Janggi experience—not interface literacy—become enough to play a complete match. Speak (Elder → Agent) — They say, “포 사용해서 위쪽 차 먹어줘” (“Use the cannon to capture the chariot at the top”). Resolve (Agent ↔ WebMCP state) — WebMCP exposes the board, turn, and legal moves. The Agent resolves the coordinate-free request, including the cannon's screen-piece rule, against that state. Play it safely (Agent → WebMCP → Web UI) — MASIL validates and animates the legal move. Continue (Elder ↔ Web UI ↔ WebMCP ↔ Agent) — The Agent takes the other side. A direct move by the elder returns to the waiting Agent, so speech and direct play continue the same match. Together, the two experiences restore access while expanding what the activity can become: creation beyond a fixed library and a complete match through familiar language. How we built it The Agent expands what is possible. WebMCP turns that capability into a live activity the elder can enter and continue without first learning the interface. MASIL is built around one continuing exchange, not a collection of Agent commands. The elder's Agent handles conversation, interpretation, generation, and the next judgment. MASIL provides the live canvas, Janggi board, rules, and visible activity. WebMCP joins them in both directions: the Agent's contribution enters the Web UI, and what the elder does there becomes new context for the Agent. The result is a single loop: elder's words → Agent judgment → WebMCP → live activity → elder's action → Agent continuation . We implemented its semantic tool surface with document.modelContext.registerTool() in a Next.js, React, and TypeScript app. WebGPU and Vercel Labs' vGPU render the creative spaces, while ONNX Runtime Web supports local hand tracking. Challenges we ran into Once that loop worked, we found that tool execution was the easy part. A WebMCP call could return successfully while the activity still failed: a calligraphy reference remained outside the canvas, a Janggi move stopped at an explanation, or the Agent continued from stale state. Tool-level tests could therefore make a broken user experience look complete. So we evaluated the experience end to end. We froze 15 realistic scenarios, ran each twice in a clean context, and scored only the complete visible outcome. Across one control and 24 WebMCP candidates—25 official iterations in total—we refined the Agent-facing surface while keeping every task and assertion fixed. Every failed candidate stayed in the record; the definition of success never moved. Accomplishments that we're proud of On the same frozen 30-session evaluation, the no-WebMCP control succeeded in 6 of 30 trials. The retained iteration-008 succeeded in 28. Same frozen evaluation No WebMCP control iteration-008 Overall task success 6/30 (20.0%) 28/30 (93.3%) Calligraphy 2/16 (12.5%) 14/16 (87.5%) Janggi 4/10 (40.0%) 10/10 (100%) Interface continuity 0/4 (0%) 4/4 (100%) Agent tokens per try 21,593 18,550 Seconds per try 21.1 21.1 That is a 73.3 percentage-point improvement , using about 14% fewer Agent tokens with no increase in average time. We did not stop when the score first peaked: we tested 17 more candidates after iteration-008 and rejected every one because none produced a better verified result. Every iteration preserves its exact candidate source, case grades, timing, and final responses. What we learned What MASIL taught us Access is not participation. A person can have a connected device and still be excluded if meaningful activity begins only after they understand the interface. Voice or an Agent alone may leave them with an answer outside the activity. Generation becomes meaningful inside a continuing activity. An Agent can create a new starting point for each person and moment, but an output in chat is still only a response. WebMCP makes it usable when that contribution enters the live Web UI, remains shapeable, and can be changed by what the elder does next. How we now define WebMCP: a new accessibility standard We now see WebMCP as a shared accessibility layer that turns technical Agent access into human participation without requiring interface mastery first . Conventional accessibility remains essential; WebMCP adds a second criterion for the Agent-native web: Can a person enter, shape, and expand a meaningful web activity through their Agent—without first mastering its interface? A WebMCP-ready website can meet people through the language and abilities they already have, then open possibilities that no fixed interface could anticipate. What's next for MASIL — Reconnecting Korean Elders to Creative Life Calligraphy and Janggi are MASIL's starting point, not its boundary. We will first test whether homebound Korean elders can begin, shape, and resume meaningful creative activity through their Agent without learning the interface. If that voluntary experience earns trust, MASIL could become an earlier doorway for unmet needs: an elder explicitly asks for help, reviews what would be shared, and chooses whether it moves forward. Korea's customized-care system serves about 550,000 vulnerable elders through roughly 2,600 dedicated social workers and 35,000 frontline care workers ; MASIL does not claim to save their time, but asks whether a trusted return path could help scarce human attention reach people before isolation becomes a crisis.