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MCP is a fad

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Re: MCP is a fad

#41
There are many good points, but unfortunately the title ("fad") and the conclusion seem unwarranted, become a distraction and diminish the value of the article.

The security issue has been discussed many times in the past year.

Agree on the "one process per server" thing -- seems smart and convenient but gets worse when the number of MCPs and coding agents go up, especially when combined with the following point.

Lifetime is a real issue, and I am glad that someone talks about it. You probably won't worry the overhead for git, GitHub or Playwright MCP servers, where they are likely wrappers for some bash commands or rest APIs or everything is fast to launch. However, lifetime is still an issue, when you have multiple coding agents or sessions.

It gets worse for certain applications, especially heavy desktop apps (Imagine an MCP server for Lightroom classical) -- due to their application model, in order to evaluate a command, you'll have to load half of the application to do that. You'd think you only want to launch this once. But likely not. Each coding agent session will launch its own instance. Maybe this won't happen if the MCP server works extra hard to share processes and manage lifetimes on its own, but it totally depends on the third party provider, and the behavior could vary wildly.

Would a user want to deal with all these issues? If they are not careful, they'll easy launch 15 processes consuming 1G of memory for two coding agents, one of which does not actually use any of those servers, and one is simply sitting idle because the user hasn't started vibe coding yet.

(If this doesn't seem an issue to you, probably just because you haven't run into it first hand yet )

I think there has got to be a better way to do this.

Re: MCP is a fad

#42
post #20

MCP is just a small, boring protocol that lets agents call tools in a standard way, nothing more. You can run a single MCP server next to your app, expose a few scripts or APIs, and you are done. There is no requirement for dozens of random servers or a giant plugin zoo. Most of the “overhead” and “security nightmare” worries assume the worst possible setup with zero curation and bad ops. That would be messy with any…

> Most of the “overhead” and “security nightmare” worries assume the worst possible setup with zero curation and bad ops.

You'll be surprised to learn that these are extremely common, even in large corporations. Security practice is often far from ideal due to both incompetence and negligence. Just this week, I accidentally got the credentials for the account used in our CI systems. Don't ask me how this could possibly happen.

Re: MCP is a fad

#43
post #18

This analysis dismisses MCP by focusing too narrowly on local file system interactions. The real value isn't just running scripts; it's interoperability. MCP allows any client (Claude, Cursor, IDEs) to dynamically discover and interact with any resource (Postgres, Slack) without custom glue code. Comparing it to local scripts is like calling USB a fad because parallel ports worked for printers. The power is standardi…

Doesn't that require a complete lack of concern on the part of the postgres side? I feel like I'm missing something in terms of why anyone would even ever allow that.

With a read only account, with access only to certain safe tables and views, for querying.

Re: MCP is a fad

#44
post #14

I don't think MCP is a fad - I think it is the 2020s equivalent of: - Active X - asbestos - leaded gasoline and paint - radium medicines Well, with the exception of the first 3 actually being quite useful.

An LLM could never write this.

Re: MCP is a fad

#46
MCP is also a pretty good way to circumvent normal API security and many companies bought into it - and all of that just to hop on the AI hype train.

You can do your own research.

Re: MCP is a fad

#47
post #18

This analysis dismisses MCP by focusing too narrowly on local file system interactions. The real value isn't just running scripts; it's interoperability. MCP allows any client (Claude, Cursor, IDEs) to dynamically discover and interact with any resource (Postgres, Slack) without custom glue code. Comparing it to local scripts is like calling USB a fad because parallel ports worked for printers. The power is standardi…

[flagged]

It is really funny to me that in 2026 a coherent, grammatically correct response is assumed to be written by an AI. Oh how the tables have turned.

Re: MCP is a fad

#48
post #20

MCP is just a small, boring protocol that lets agents call tools in a standard way, nothing more. You can run a single MCP server next to your app, expose a few scripts or APIs, and you are done. There is no requirement for dozens of random servers or a giant plugin zoo. Most of the “overhead” and “security nightmare” worries assume the worst possible setup with zero curation and bad ops. That would be messy with any…

"tools" are also a fad. It will all just converge back to being called APIs.

Re: MCP is a fad

#49
post #39

What do MCPs do that the CLI cannot? i.e. assuming your agent has access to the terminal, and therefore CLIs, what additional value do MCPs provide?

Out of curiosity, I put this exact question to claude [0]. Here's a tl;dr of its answer with my refutations:

> MCPs expose tools with defined schemas, parameters, and return types.

CLIs do exactly the same thing

> Stateful Connections

A chat session with an LLM is exactly that!

> MCPs can return structured data (JSON, complex objects)

So can an agent with a CLI. E.g. they can just take output and > file.json - now they have a json file.

> MCPs can expose "resources" - like file contents, database schemas, or API documentation - that I can read directly

If you mention these in your prompt to an agent, then they know where to look and can access them too (and use keys etc as necessary)!

> MCPs can send progress updates, ask for clarification, or stream results.

So can a chat session with an agent.

> MCPs can implement fine-grained permission controls and rate limiting at the protocol level.

Rate limiting is easy for an agent. Fine-grained permission could be limited by the user of the agent (e.g. by giving a restricted key for the agent to use), so possible if desired.

tl;dr no added benefit whatsoever.

[0] https://claude.ai/share/4b339fbd-a6db-4fcb-86cd-0e8493aab663

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