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MCPs are diminishing in value a bit, because AI Agents are getting smarter about using API/CLIs. For example, I use gh cli via Claude instead of their MCP, beca

by 5ersi 29d ago

MCPs are diminishing in value a bit, because AI Agents are getting smarter about using API/CLIs. For example, I use gh cli via Claude instead of their MCP, because I already had cli setup, so no need to use MCP. MCPs can potentially have great value if they cross multiple sources and combine results. For example at work we use an in-house MCP for log/metrics search across five different (legacy) systems. It finds correlation across events in different system within minutes.

skerit 29d ago
I use MCPs all the time, but just like in your case: they're my own MCP servers. They do exactly what I want and how I want it. They expose just the information and the features I want the LLM to have. And just like in your case, it combines multiple sources of information into 1 response.
newman314 29d ago
FWIW, it appears that using the gh cli is much more token efficient than MCP so that's a plus. https://medium.com/@ravi.madabhushi/mcp-is-up-to-32-more-expensive-than-cli-heres-why-we-still-use-it-d18765735647 https://medium.com/@ravi.madabhushi/mcp-is-up-to-32-more-exp...
- sammorrowdrums 29d ago
  I see benchmarks a lot working on this, and I honestly think there’s too many things to cover in this comment but: - this article doesn’t enable tool search for starters where tokens start at near zero for MCP too - even with the above, talks of the raw token count don’t consider that for very long trajectories the prompt cache amortises much of this cost, and a feature of MCP is you can also customise the tools to a select subset, and that’s powerful - you can add tool confirmations for write/destructive actions trivially - the old training data on CLIs is good but actually for new features the fact MCP advertises them is also a bonus, but that takes longer to see, MCP isn’t that old There are many more aspects, but even with GitHub MCP, where the agent has a huge amount of pre-training on the CLI, there are still reasons why people use it extensively - you don’t hear it a lot here but suffice to say usage never stopped growing to this day. I think if CLIs are working for you then good, I also like our cli and did some work on it too, like adding gh skill subcommand. Do use what works, and measure and improve - but this article is not doing justice to the MCP server IMHO.
  - throwup238 29d ago
    > - this article doesn’t enable tool search for starters where tokens start at near zero for MCP too Is that why I have to constantly remind Claude and ChatGPT that they do have access to a Github plugin that can access my account, instead of trying and failing to use the gh cli?
    - gycom 29d ago
      "claude, stop shelling out to grep, your search tool uses ripgrep and it's faster."
      - dleech 28d ago
        0verload.net ... I am the Author if the tool. I cloned grep and hopped it up a with a bunch of globs and stuff only a bot can really use. You can version control directorys ...its not meant to replace git.. I wronte it for my self because I was tired of wishing it hadnt been a week since i checked into github. I have not have regression at all since I started using it ..its a godsend.it increases the effective context size by a huge ammount..if you learn to use it correctly you can have hundreds of megs of context without a problem and share it between agents. Additionally theres an edit monitor that throws every file and the diff for all the things the bots edit and you cvan scroll thru the sessions edits holding alt down and page thru the days code. ITs meant to be a pair programming tool to use with claude code. I have full mcp support but I also have a more powerful scripting language.mcp support is just part of the scripting language..so is rest..the whole thing is bot centric..I have guis for itm all but you can just tell the bots to o stuff ..I made the bot interfaces for everything and then the gui. Oh..it caches all the memory contexts and all the verson controlled filex in ram so grepping stuff in the source controlled folder is considerably faster..anwhere from hundreds to I have seen 6000+ times faster grep results not thru any sort of black magic..its just what happens when a custom written grep has a in ram
      - 0x457 28d ago
        "claude: my harness tells me to use python's pathlib"
kobalsky 28d ago
MCP doesn't expose service credentials to the AI.
- kaoD 28d ago
  I definitely think that's a bridge to gap, but MCP is not the answer. OSes currently lack the tools to do this properly, but I hope they will improve. Agents need more granular sandboxing in all areas.
- manveerc 28d ago
  This is not true by default. There are plenty of poorly implemented MCP servers which do that. The MCP spec supports Oauth and intends to avoid that but it is not enforced.
  - deleted 24d ago
    [deleted]
tirpen 28d ago
The main benefit of MCP today over just giving an agent a CLI is of course that you can be a lot more certain about what the agent can or can't do. Yes, an agent with CLI access and access to making HTTPS calls is a lot more efficient for most tasks, but also a lot more unpredictable and with much higher blast radius if it starts misbehaving compared to one that only have access to exactly the tools and data sources you want it to use.
- dmazzoni 28d ago
  In practice that’s a lot of the value MCPs are providing. Technically it’d work just as well to have a thin API wrapper or cli tool the agent is allowed to access.
dominotw 28d ago
gh cli prbly has a lot of training data so maybe not a fair comparison
- nojito 28d ago
  No it's because any model can do gh --help cli tools are a natural fit for llms.
  - dominotw 28d ago
    actually run it now and see it wont do the help command you are talking about
EyeEmOe 26d ago
Agree with this. MCP and RAG feel like the usual pattern of running a daemon 24/7 that balloons infrastructure spend. So uncivilized. Any given REST API is a small model. A frontier or local model and modern harness can parse the already existing documentation for that REST API and invoke or generate a tool to use it.
apexchaos 26d ago
there is a number of importance that MCP can provide you outside using API/CLIs. when integrating with external services and you want a deterministic layer for your agent that can scale independently as your agentic layer in complex system while providing functionality like prompts and static read-only resources that can in turn be used for context injection and optimization. you might want to use MCP when it is this but for local services with alot of dependency or you want to write alot of wiring code, you can settle for API/CLIs

by 5ersi 29d ago

skerit 29d ago

I use MCPs all the time, but just like in your case: they're my own MCP servers. They do exactly what I want and how I want it. They expose just the information and the features I want the LLM to have. And just like in your case, it combines multiple sources of information into 1 response.

newman314 29d ago

FWIW, it appears that using the gh cli is much more token efficient than MCP so that's a plus. https://medium.com/@ravi.madabhushi/mcp-is-up-to-32-more-expensive-than-cli-heres-why-we-still-use-it-d18765735647 https://medium.com/@ravi.madabhushi/mcp-is-up-to-32-more-exp...

sammorrowdrums 29d ago
I see benchmarks a lot working on this, and I honestly think there’s too many things to cover in this comment but: - this article doesn’t enable tool search for starters where tokens start at near zero for MCP too - even with the above, talks of the raw token count don’t consider that for very long trajectories the prompt cache amortises much of this cost, and a feature of MCP is you can also customise the tools to a select subset, and that’s powerful - you can add tool confirmations for write/destructive actions trivially - the old training data on CLIs is good but actually for new features the fact MCP advertises them is also a bonus, but that takes longer to see, MCP isn’t that old There are many more aspects, but even with GitHub MCP, where the agent has a huge amount of pre-training on the CLI, there are still reasons why people use it extensively - you don’t hear it a lot here but suffice to say usage never stopped growing to this day. I think if CLIs are working for you then good, I also like our cli and did some work on it too, like adding gh skill subcommand. Do use what works, and measure and improve - but this article is not doing justice to the MCP server IMHO.
- throwup238 29d ago
  > - this article doesn’t enable tool search for starters where tokens start at near zero for MCP too Is that why I have to constantly remind Claude and ChatGPT that they do have access to a Github plugin that can access my account, instead of trying and failing to use the gh cli?
  - gycom 29d ago
    "claude, stop shelling out to grep, your search tool uses ripgrep and it's faster."
    - dleech 28d ago
      0verload.net ... I am the Author if the tool. I cloned grep and hopped it up a with a bunch of globs and stuff only a bot can really use. You can version control directorys ...its not meant to replace git.. I wronte it for my self because I was tired of wishing it hadnt been a week since i checked into github. I have not have regression at all since I started using it ..its a godsend.it increases the effective context size by a huge ammount..if you learn to use it correctly you can have hundreds of megs of context without a problem and share it between agents. Additionally theres an edit monitor that throws every file and the diff for all the things the bots edit and you cvan scroll thru the sessions edits holding alt down and page thru the days code. ITs meant to be a pair programming tool to use with claude code. I have full mcp support but I also have a more powerful scripting language.mcp support is just part of the scripting language..so is rest..the whole thing is bot centric..I have guis for itm all but you can just tell the bots to o stuff ..I made the bot interfaces for everything and then the gui. Oh..it caches all the memory contexts and all the verson controlled filex in ram so grepping stuff in the source controlled folder is considerably faster..anwhere from hundreds to I have seen 6000+ times faster grep results not thru any sort of black magic..its just what happens when a custom written grep has a in ram
    - 0x457 28d ago
      "claude: my harness tells me to use python's pathlib"

kobalsky 28d ago

MCP doesn't expose service credentials to the AI.

kaoD 28d ago
I definitely think that's a bridge to gap, but MCP is not the answer. OSes currently lack the tools to do this properly, but I hope they will improve. Agents need more granular sandboxing in all areas.
manveerc 28d ago
This is not true by default. There are plenty of poorly implemented MCP servers which do that. The MCP spec supports Oauth and intends to avoid that but it is not enforced.
- deleted 24d ago
  [deleted]

tirpen 28d ago

The main benefit of MCP today over just giving an agent a CLI is of course that you can be a lot more certain about what the agent can or can't do. Yes, an agent with CLI access and access to making HTTPS calls is a lot more efficient for most tasks, but also a lot more unpredictable and with much higher blast radius if it starts misbehaving compared to one that only have access to exactly the tools and data sources you want it to use.

dmazzoni 28d ago
In practice that’s a lot of the value MCPs are providing. Technically it’d work just as well to have a thin API wrapper or cli tool the agent is allowed to access.

dominotw 28d ago

gh cli prbly has a lot of training data so maybe not a fair comparison

nojito 28d ago
No it's because any model can do gh --help cli tools are a natural fit for llms.
- dominotw 28d ago
  actually run it now and see it wont do the help command you are talking about

EyeEmOe 26d ago

Agree with this. MCP and RAG feel like the usual pattern of running a daemon 24/7 that balloons infrastructure spend. So uncivilized. Any given REST API is a small model. A frontier or local model and modern harness can parse the already existing documentation for that REST API and invoke or generate a tool to use it.

apexchaos 26d ago

there is a number of importance that MCP can provide you outside using API/CLIs. when integrating with external services and you want a deterministic layer for your agent that can scale independently as your agentic layer in complex system while providing functionality like prompts and static read-only resources that can in turn be used for context injection and optimization. you might want to use MCP when it is this but for local services with alot of dependency or you want to write alot of wiring code, you can settle for API/CLIs