Lately I found MCP to be much more than a coding tool. For example, I implemented it in my more complex macOS apps [0] like rcmd, Clop, Lunar, so they can be configured by natural language.
So even with a local Qwen and Pi you can now say things like:
Set up Clop to optimise any PNG that I drop in my website assets folder and convert to a webp with the same name near it
Get Crank to start Time Machine backups immediately when I connect my HDD and notify me when the backup is done.
I want to be able to hold rcmd and fuzzy search and focus cmux agent panes
BetterTouchTool has a great MCP which can create native SwiftUI views and bind them to hotkeys, trackpad gestures etc. It can leverage its immense macOS automation tools and private APIs to let agents do Computer Use.
You would need a much more capable coding model to code those tools from scratch and get the same fail-safe logic that the apps have honed over the years.
Like, since MCP, Crank [1] has fully replaced my use of crontab, launchd, scattered scripts I run once a week. Not that it could not do that before, but it's so much simpler now to just describe the automation and have it happen reliably and visible in the UI. The friction is gone.
I gave claude an API key for Home Assistant. I can tell it to create dashboards, set up automations, diagnose problems etc, all using natural language. No MCP needed.
Yesterday I received a new thermometer for my aquarium to replace an old broken one. Both were bluetooth, but different models. I just told claude "I'm going to set up up my new bluetooth thermometer for my fish tank in a few minutes, keep an eye out for it and replace the old broken one with it in Home Assistant" and then walked away and put a battery in it and put it in my aquarium.
When I came back it had found it, replaced all my existing entities for the broken one with the new one, and verified it was all working with my existing graphs and automations.
One of the nice things about MCP is that the tools have descriptions that provide guidance to the LLM. You can provide documentation in other formats like OpenAPI but its nice that the documentation is so closely coupled with MCP servers.
> One of the nice things about MCP is that the tools have descriptions that provide guidance to the LLM.
It is more of a curse than a blessing. MCP pollutes agent context even when you are not using it. Use a manually invoked skill instead if you don't want to be wasting tokens on every turn and bloating up agent context making it dumber in the process.
alin23 · · focus · HN ↗
So even with a local Qwen and Pi you can now say things like:
BetterTouchTool has a great MCP which can create native SwiftUI views and bind them to hotkeys, trackpad gestures etc. It can leverage its immense macOS automation tools and private APIs to let agents do Computer Use.You would need a much more capable coding model to code those tools from scratch and get the same fail-safe logic that the apps have honed over the years.
Like, since MCP, Crank [1] has fully replaced my use of crontab, launchd, scattered scripts I run once a week. Not that it could not do that before, but it's so much simpler now to just describe the automation and have it happen reliably and visible in the UI. The friction is gone.
[0] <a href="https://reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1wkv0dy/mcp_in_macos_apps_are_they_useful_for_you/" rel="nofollow">https://reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1wkv0dy/mcp_in_macos_a...
[1] <a href="https://lowtechguys.com/crank" rel="nofollow">https://lowtechguys.com/crank
mike-cardwell · · focus · HN ↗
Yesterday I received a new thermometer for my aquarium to replace an old broken one. Both were bluetooth, but different models. I just told claude "I'm going to set up up my new bluetooth thermometer for my fish tank in a few minutes, keep an eye out for it and replace the old broken one with it in Home Assistant" and then walked away and put a battery in it and put it in my aquarium.
When I came back it had found it, replaced all my existing entities for the broken one with the new one, and verified it was all working with my existing graphs and automations.
c-hendricks · · focus · HN ↗
Definitely helps that the home assistant api is documented online most likely in the training data.
matt_heimer · · focus · HN ↗
cheema33 · · focus · HN ↗
It is more of a curse than a blessing. MCP pollutes agent context even when you are not using it. Use a manually invoked skill instead if you don't want to be wasting tokens on every turn and bloating up agent context making it dumber in the process.
c-hendricks · · focus · HN ↗
MCP in some harnesses bloats context. MCP in some harnesses doesn't bloat context.