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Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
All of these things are perfectly possible with a plain REST API with an Open API spec and using some standard auth options, and an AI client that implements a reasonable “make api request tool” (just like the AI clients implement MCP today).
I think the real value of MCP is that it allowed companies to say “we’re doing AI!” When they built an MCP server. Just saying “use our api” was a lot less exciting.
Giving it a different name probably also helped cut through politics at companies where non-technical people didn’t want to open up user data with an API, but they did want to do AI.
it's mostly true but the mcp also installs the knowledge of that REST API in a standard way so that a user can ask "what's projected revenue this month?" and it'll know how to hit your company brain and answer
most users i'm dealing with are not doc-reading developers. even getting them to tell claude to use tool X is pretty hit or miss whereas claude already knowing what tool to use is 100% hit with correct mcp tool descriptions.
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Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
mikeocool · · focus · HN ↗
I think the real value of MCP is that it allowed companies to say “we’re doing AI!” When they built an MCP server. Just saying “use our api” was a lot less exciting.
Giving it a different name probably also helped cut through politics at companies where non-technical people didn’t want to open up user data with an API, but they did want to do AI.
rgbrgb · · focus · HN ↗
jimbokun · · focus · HN ↗
rgbrgb · · focus · HN ↗