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Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
I feel like this would build a false sense of security.
Authentication and access controls must be able to withstand an agent with full shell access. And auditing must be on the server side to provide a full picture of all activity from all clients, whether human or agent.
We must treat agents as clever humans and secure and audit data access accordingly. The era of thinking we can handle agent access to sensitive information differently from human access has passed.
My point about MCPs here is that they provide a way to make those secrets and API keys deterministically inaccessible to the agents - even agents that's have a shell execution environment.
That's the opposite of a false sense of security.
just use an api gateway (ie., a reverse proxy for apis), eg., envoy. This should also be connected to observability and finops style management anyway rather than leaving it to model providers.
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Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build.
jimbokun · · focus · HN ↗
Authentication and access controls must be able to withstand an agent with full shell access. And auditing must be on the server side to provide a full picture of all activity from all clients, whether human or agent.
We must treat agents as clever humans and secure and audit data access accordingly. The era of thinking we can handle agent access to sensitive information differently from human access has passed.
simonw · · focus · HN ↗
That's the opposite of a false sense of security.
mjburgess · · focus · HN ↗