How is this the 5th one of these I have seen this week, is everyone just trying to make the same thing?
Basically yes.
Since there is no friction and everyone is generating an idea to code using GitHub training data, this is basically the future
Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
81–90 of 118 posts
Re: Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
#82> Every MCP server injects its full tool schemas into context on every turn I consider this a bug. I'm sure the chat clients will fix this soon enough. Something like: on each turn, a subagent searches available MCP tools for anything relevant. Usually, nothing helpful will be found and the regular chat continues without any MCP context added.
You’re spot on. Anthropic blogs talk about a ToolSearchTool to solve this problem - https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/advanced-tool-use
Re: Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
#83Cool, adding this to my list of MCP CLIs: - https://github.com/apify/mcpc - https://github.com/chrishayuk/mcp-cli - https://github.com/wong2/mcp-cli - https://github.com/f/mcptools - https://github.com/adhikasp/mcp-client-cli - https://github.com/thellimist/clihub - https://github.com/EstebanForge/mcp-cli-ent - https://github.com/knowsuchagency/mcp2cli - https://github.com/philschmid/mcp-cli - https://github.com/stei…
The biggest surprise of this list is someone grabbed "f" as github username, clever.
Re: Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
#84I may be showing my ignorance here, but wouldn't the ideal situation be for the service to use the same number of tokens no matter what client sent the query? If the service is using more tokens to produce the same output from the same query, but over a different protocol, than the service is a scam.
If you intercept what an agent (client) sends to the LLM with multiple MCP servers and tools, the context or header is filled with available MCP servers and all tools as part of the conversation.
With a CLI, you avoid sending this context to the LLM and it progressively discovers only what is needed.
The input token costs come down because of using a CLI instead of MCP
Re: Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically yes.
Since there is no friction and everyone is generating an idea to code using GitHub training data, this is basically the future
Not invented here (NIH) syndrome has always been a thing but I think what we are seeing at the moment is an artificial high vs new ideas because
1. People are looking for excuses to learn to use AI because they’re scared of being left behind.
2. People are looking for examples of AI projects to add to their LinkedIn profile so they appear a tech leader and thus more employable
Re: Show HN: Mcp2cli – One CLI for every API, 96-99% fewer tokens than native MCP
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
MCP is the future in enterprise and teams. It's as you said: people misunderstand MCP and what it delivers. If you only use it as an API? Useless. If you use it on a small solo project? Useless. But if you want to share skills across a fleet of repos? Deliver standard prompts to baseline developer output and productivity? Without having to sync them? And have it updated live? MCP prompts. If you want to share canonic…
So just to clarify, in your case you're running a centralized MCP server for the whole org, right? Otherwise I don't understand how MCP vs CLI solves anything.
Correct.
Centralized MCP server over HTTP that enables standardized doc lookup across the org, standardized skills (as MCP prompt), MCP resources (these are virtual indexes of the docs that is similar to how Vercel formatted their `AGENTS.md`), and a small set of tools.
We emit OTEL from the server and build dashboards to see how the agents and devs are using context and tools and which documents are "high signal" meaning they get hit frequently so we know that tuning these docs will yield more consistent output.
OAuth lets us see the users because every call has identity attached.