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Posted by ejholmes 20 hours ago

When does MCP make sense vs CLI?(ejholmes.github.io)
395 points | 251 commentspage 12
aplomb1026 13 hours ago|
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aplomb1026 19 hours ago||
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entrustai 16 hours ago||
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nimbus-hn-test 19 hours ago||
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mt42or 19 hours ago||
I remember this kind of people against Kubernetes the same exact way. Very funny.
ejholmes 10 hours ago||
Funny. Dealing with Kubernetes is my day job, and I can be equally critical of it. Pointing out absurdities is how we make things better, and that’s ok.
tedk-42 19 hours ago||
Same clowns complaining that `npm install` downloads the entire internet.

Now it's completely fine for an AI agent to do the same and blow up their context window.

ejholmes 18 hours ago|
Hi friends! Author here. This blew up a bit, so some words.

The article title and content is intentionally provocative. It’s just to get people thinking. My real views are probably a lot more balanced. I totally get there’s a space where MCP probably does actually make sense. Particularly in areas where CLI invocation would be challenging. I think we probably could have come up with something better than MCP to fill that space, but it’s still better than nothing.

Really all I want folks to take away from this is to think “hmm, maybe a CLI would actually be better for this particular use case”. If I were to point a finger at anything in particular, it would be Datadog and Slack who have chosen to build MCP’s instead of official CLI’s that agents can use. A CLI would be infinitely better (for me).

csheaff 18 hours ago||
Thank you for writing this. I've had similar thoughts myself and have been teetering back and forth between MCP and skills that invoke CLI. I'm hoping this creates a discussion that points to the right pattern.
g947o 17 hours ago||
"intentionally provocative"

I would almost use the words "intentionally uninformed" instead.

There are huge holes in the article (as pointed out by many comments here), and I have to wonder if you genuinely don't have enough experience with MCP to bring them up, or you intentionally omitted them to make the arguments for CLI.

ejholmes 17 hours ago||
I get it. This is coming from a place where I see MCP's being adopted, where CLI is (in my opinion) better. Particularly where you're already in a CLI environment, and tool composition is necessary. I'm sure there's plenty of folks that aren't operating in that environment.