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What if you don't need MCP at all?

mariozechner.at

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Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#111

Post by paulddraper »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #92
paulddraper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. Claude and ChatGPT both support MCP, as does the OpenAI Agents SDK. (If you mean the LLM itself, it is "known" at least as much as any other protocol. For whatever that means.)

>it is "known" at least as much as any other protocol. No. It is not. Please understand what the LLM's are doing. Claude nor ChatGPT nor any major model knows what MCP is. They know how to function & tool call. They have zero trained data on MCP. That is a factual statement, not an opinion.

> They have zero trained data on MCP.

They have significant data trained on MCP.

> They know how to function & tool call.

Right. You can either use MCP to transmit those tool calls, or you can create some other interface.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#112

Post by paulddraper »

didibus wrote: post #108
whoknowsidont wrote: post #15

MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework that was vague enough to lure people into and then allow other companies to build plugin platforms to take care of the MCP non-sense. "What is MCP, what does it bring to the table? Who knows. What does it do? The LLM stuff! Pay us $10 a month thanks!" LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. Not…

> MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework Can you go more in depth? The protocol is relatively simple, what about it you feel is "shitty" as a plugin framework?

The hate for MCP here is absurd.

It's JSON-RPC, with some descriptors.

And some comments about OAuth 2.

The value is in the consensus. You can make a tool that agents can connect to with no apriori knowledge.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#113

Post by jcelerier »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #15

MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework that was vague enough to lure people into and then allow other companies to build plugin platforms to take care of the MCP non-sense. "What is MCP, what does it bring to the table? Who knows. What does it do? The LLM stuff! Pay us $10 a month thanks!" LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. Not…

> LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP.

but the major user interfaces for operating LLMs do and that's what matters

> Not only do you not need MCP, but you should actively avoid using it.

> Stick with tried and proven API standards that are actually observable and secure and let your models/agents directly interact with those API endpoints.

so what's the proven and standard API I can use to interact with ableton live? blender? unity3d? photoshop?

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#114

Post by whoknowsidont »

jcelerier wrote: post #113
whoknowsidont wrote: post #15

MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework that was vague enough to lure people into and then allow other companies to build plugin platforms to take care of the MCP non-sense. "What is MCP, what does it bring to the table? Who knows. What does it do? The LLM stuff! Pay us $10 a month thanks!" LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. Not…

> LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. but the major user interfaces for operating LLMs do and that's what matters > Not only do you not need MCP, but you should actively avoid using it. > Stick with tried and proven API standards that are actually observable and secure and let your models/agents directly interact with those API endpoints. so what's the…

[flagged]

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#115

Post by whoknowsidont »

paulddraper wrote: post #112
didibus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework Can you go more in depth? The protocol is relatively simple, what about it you feel is "shitty" as a plugin framework?

The hate for MCP here is absurd. It's JSON-RPC, with some descriptors. And some comments about OAuth 2. The value is in the consensus. You can make a tool that agents can connect to with no apriori knowledge.

>It's JSON-RPC, with some descriptors.

That's not even true. It defines the lifecycle of tool calling.

JSON-RPC with some descriptors would have been fine and amazing.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#116

Post by whoknowsidont »

paulddraper wrote: post #111
whoknowsidont wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it is "known" at least as much as any other protocol. No. It is not. Please understand what the LLM's are doing. Claude nor ChatGPT nor any major model knows what MCP is. They know how to function & tool call. They have zero trained data on MCP. That is a factual statement, not an opinion.

> They have zero trained data on MCP. They have significant data trained on MCP. > They know how to function & tool call. Right. You can either use MCP to transmit those tool calls, or you can create some other interface.

>They have significant data trained on MCP.

No they don't lol.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#117

Post by whoknowsidont »

paulddraper wrote: post #86
upghost wrote: post #43

So I don't disagree with any of the criticisms of MCPs but no one here has mentioned why they are useful, and I'm not sure that everyone is aware that MCP is actually just a wrapper over existing cli/API: 1. Claude Code is aware of what MCPs it has access to at all times. 2. Adding an MCP is like adding to the agent's actuators/vocabulary/tools because unlike cli tools or APIs you don't have to constantly remind it w…

MCP is simply a standardized RPC protocol for LLMs. That's it. The value is in all the usual features of standardization -- plug-and-play, observability, pass-through modifications, etc.

>observability

Which MCP does the opposite of. It hides information.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#118

Post by ares623 »

urbandw311er wrote: post #61
chpatrick wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they nondeterministic? You can use a fixed seed or temperature=0.

Even with zero temperature (and some of the latest models don’t allow that) you’re still not absolutely guaranteed deterministic output.

Just repeatable output.

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#119

Post by nilslice »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #114
jcelerier wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. but the major user interfaces for operating LLMs do and that's what matters > Not only do you not need MCP, but you should actively avoid using it. > Stick with tried and proven API standards that are actually observable and secure and let your models/agents directly interact with those API endpoints. so what's the…

[flagged]

What do all of the links below have in common? Do you know of another way you can control all of those applications via LLMs? Computer use?

https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp

https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp

https://github.com/CoplayDev/unity-mcp

https://github.com/mikechambers/adb-mcp

Re: What if you don't need MCP at all?

#120

Post by EagnaIonat »

cyanydeez wrote: post #20
whoknowsidont wrote: post #15

MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework that was vague enough to lure people into and then allow other companies to build plugin platforms to take care of the MCP non-sense. "What is MCP, what does it bring to the table? Who knows. What does it do? The LLM stuff! Pay us $10 a month thanks!" LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP. Not…

probably easier to just tell people: You want MCP? Add a "description" field to your rest API that describes how to call it. That's all it's doing. Just plain ole context pollution. World could be better served by continuing to build out the APIs that exist.

> Just plain ole context pollution.

It would normally be a second context window to figure out what tool / agent to run.

My only quibble with MCP is in the usual AI bandwagon people are implementing for FOMO than business value. My experience is likely anecdotal though.

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