This article entirely misses the value that MCP brings today.
Sure, there's almost no reason to use MCPs if you are running a full-blown terminal agent (Claude Code, Codex, Meta Muse, OpenClaw etc) with unfettered internet access - just let it call APIs directly.
If you want to operate something that's less YOLO than that, you'll find yourself wanting:
1. Control over exactly which external services it can access
2. A way to handle authentication that doesn't allow the agent to directly access API keys
3. A sensible UI to allow users to connect and authenticate further services
4. Strong audit logging for what's going on
MCP makes all of that so much easier to provide.
Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
Exactly. There are so many replies here of the form “MCP sucks. If you just do <all the things mcp does a different way> you don’t need mcp at all.”
I think the point of those comments is this could have been much simpler for everyone if the model providers had given us some tools around existing standards.
Instead they invented something new/weird/complex standard, and then every client implemented slightly differently (and different parts of it).
simonw · · focus · HN ↗
Sure, there's almost no reason to use MCPs if you are running a full-blown terminal agent (Claude Code, Codex, Meta Muse, OpenClaw etc) with unfettered internet access - just let it call APIs directly.
If you want to operate something that's less YOLO than that, you'll find yourself wanting:
1. Control over exactly which external services it can access
2. A way to handle authentication that doesn't allow the agent to directly access API keys
3. A sensible UI to allow users to connect and authenticate further services
4. Strong audit logging for what's going on
MCP makes all of that so much easier to provide.
Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
seanhunter · · focus · HN ↗
Well yes.
mikeocool · · focus · HN ↗
Instead they invented something new/weird/complex standard, and then every client implemented slightly differently (and different parts of it).