I think it is on the way to death because of security .

I use all three (MCP/CLI/API) based on what Claude excels at:

* CLI: GitHub & AWS it already knows how to operate the CLIs well. Even learned about a few new CLIs like 1Password's op which it volunteered one day.

* MCP: Supabase, Shopify etc. where the CLI would be non-obvious and the affordances from the tools/descriptions helps Claude maneuver.

* API: Sometimes it just knows an API exists and is able to call it directly with python/curl. I discovered from Claude the Pokemon ecosystem has a free API out there for example.

A bit off topic, but I think Google's A2A protocol could be a sleeper hit vs. the MCP protocol.

Not because it's better, but with one switch a significant portion of web traffic can be directed to A2A servers through Google's new search box.

IDK, in my company we are qwen code base agent with quite a few MCP's:

Jira

Confluence

Gitlab

Logs & Metrics platform (inhouse solution)

QA (not sure what this one does)

Context7

mattermost

I have no idea about modern trands etc, but I wouldn't say that MCP is dead. Not the hottest new thing, sure.

A CLI or authenticated web endpoint requires somewhat arbitrary terminal or code access. MCP wraps the functionality in a way that doesn't require nearly the same permissions. Doesn't that enable a whole different class of users?

There is no publishing date on the article.

I think those are solvable problems. E.g. wrap mcp in skill or seperate forked (non context eating) call to smaller model to ask which mcps are applicable. Iet probably does this. Honestly I have not had issues with MCPs where I felt compelled to debug them.

MCPs are very useful when you don't have a CLI or you do but the MCP can handle auth like a proxy to something (e.g. Splunk). Or just for the USB-C analogy she gave.

I was writing MCP servers, now I just write tools for agents to consume. It's often easier to simply write the tool you need and suggest to it to look at the tool to do that thing.

I was also surprised to find out Claude knew how to use the gitlab api with pointing it at the token var in the environment. But for corporations it might make more sense to use a cli to keep the secrets separate from the agent.

I just don't see how she missed in her example that the post to linear graphql endpoint needs the model to load the graphql definitions, there's no way it's 65x the tokens. Whatever overage it actually is, it's well worth not having to muck around with graphql.

Fixed with subagents.