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Posted by Stwerner 3 days ago

MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System(worksonmymachine.substack.com)
789 points | 345 commentspage 3
neonbrain 2 days ago|
I believe Microsoft's usual "Embrace, Expand, Extinguish" strategy is at work here. For system stability and security reasons, you wouldn't actually want agents to dynamically discover tools without proper governance. Alternatives like PydanitcAI are lost in this steady MCP noise maintained by Microsoft - their "Embrace" phase for MCP, declared during Build 2025 event. Anthropic released this open standard with weak tooling and no governance for the specs, making it easy for Microsoft to dominate.

The next step would be Microsoft attempting to make their registry the de facto choice for developers and extending with Windows-specific verbs.

Then, by controlling what's considered "secure", they can marginalize competitors.

bigmattystyles 2 days ago||
I thought MCPs just ‘figured out’ using docs how to call a program’s API. Won’t it matter that many APIs just suck?
rubatuga 2 days ago||
Can someone link to this supposed toaster with DP-alt mode? That supposedly runs on 240W? (Max PD power)
dgrabla 1 day ago||
If MCP gets used this way I see big trouble when people hardcode stuff and then the provider updates the endpoints. MCP does not have versions as the list-tools is a living document, you are supposed to fetch and read the current version. AI would be totally fine with it because it would be able to reason the change and adapt, but the hardcoded app is going to break badly.
tomqueue 1 day ago|
Exactly my thoughts after reading the article. I am surprised that so few have pointed this out because it entirely invalidates the article’s conclusion for any serious usage. To stay at the USB-C example: it‘s like plugging in a Toaster into a monitor but the Toaster changes its communication protocol every time it gets reconnected.
metalrain 2 days ago||
MCP works for small, well defined actions (like examples in the article), but enterprise APIs can have hundreds/thousands of endpoints/schemas for different concepts and variations of operations.

For example how would you MCP Google Ads rpc API https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/reference/rpc/v... so that LLM and user will understand that? Seems like we can't escape complexity.

brap 2 days ago||
I guess I’m finally old enough to become old-man-yelling-at-cloud.

I’m convinced that the only reason why MCP became a thing is because newcomers weren’t that familiar with OpenAPI and other existing standards, and because a protocol that is somehow tied to AI (even though it’s not, as this article shows) generates a lot of hype these days.

There’s absolutely nothing novel about MCP.

furyofantares 2 days ago||
Agents (presumably) increase the demand for APIs and if those APIs as well as already existing APIs get exposed as MCPs then I can see it.

It is dependent on agents actually creating new demand for APIs and MCP being successful as a way to expose them.

Workaccount2 2 days ago||
I know this is nit-picky and not really relevant to the actual meat of the story, but a toaster (outside of a gag gift or gimmick) cannot run on USB-C since your typical toaster draws ~1kW and USB-C power spec tops out at 240W.
jcul 2 days ago||
I assumed they were controlling the toaster over usb c or getting some data from it, interfacing with it, rather than actually powering it!

> But it worked, and now Rex's toast has HDMI output.

> Toaster control protocols? Rex says absolutely.

hnlmorg 2 days ago||
A car lighter also cannot run a pizza oven for the same reason.

But you’re right, it does kind of miss the point.

mudkipdev 2 days ago||
Anyone else feel like this article was written with ChatGPT
neuronic 2 days ago||
Not in this particular case. At this point I am starting to wonder if the

> Anyone else feel like this article was written with ChatGPT

comments are actually written by ChatGPT.

orliesaurus 1 day ago||
I do, especially the weird thing at the end that says something about MCP bread

Here

> P.S. If you build an MCP server that makes your computer emit the smell of fresh bread, we need to talk.

rsingel 2 days ago|
For those who don't read things on Substack

http://archive.today/OUymS

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