It's pretty great, actually. You can also set it to run AppleScripts, which can call the shell. I have set up buttons in the touch bar for common tasks such as

It's pretty great, actually. You can also set it to run AppleScripts, which can call the shell. I have set up buttons in the touch bar for common tasks such as zipping an archive without .DS_Store crud in Finder, and for AirMail I have a button that creates a folder based on the subject line of the open email thread and saves attachments there. I have no idea how the Touch Bar is supposed to be useful by default, but I'm finding it quite nice with some work.