Still easily doable with CLI
mostly, but not enough — i have been experimenting with this, and what i found to help is:
- help menu is the default, not an error message to stderr. ex: `gh pr` and `gh pr --help` are byte identical
- if the subcommand, or the options passed are wrong, present suggestions. ex: `gh gists` -> "Did you meant this? gist"
- the help menu should provide examples like `tldr`. sprites.dev tool `sprite` does this well, `gh` is in the training set so theirs is shorter
- can you append the docs url to the bottom of the help menu?
- you're serving llms.txt, right?So, OpenAPI/Swagger for REST? GraphQL? SOAP schemas? All of these (and more) exist. What does MCP add that these don't have?
Prompts are effectively "server delivered skills" which are are quite powerful because it solves a distribution and synchronization problem. It also allows server materialization and dynamic construction of skills.
MCP also has a few other under utilized mechanisms: elicitation[2] on the client side and completions on the server side[3]. It is an API of sorts, but specialized for agent harness <-> server interactions.
[0] https://modelcontextprotocol.info/docs/concepts/prompts/
[1] https://modelcontextprotocol.info/docs/concepts/resources/
[2] https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25/cli...
[3] https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25/ser...
The tools we need to solve this problem exist and they are boring. Types, jsonschema, openapi, all of it is a better integration point than MCP.
An enterprise has 20 services that each have a secret key (Datadog, Snowflake, etc). I want my team to have access to those services via coding agents. How do I guard those keys from both developer and agent? Put it behind MCP; neither dev nor agent ever sees the key. If developer leaves, revoke one OAuth cred.
I want to add access to internal and external services from one entry point without developers across hundred of teams having to sync or update their workspace. Put it behind one MCP interface.
I have enterprise skills and resources that I want to standardize and deliver to every team. But it has to vary in 10-15% of the skill body. Think same heuristics, but different specifics. MCP delivered prompts and resources can do that by dynamically templating them.
I want telemetry and data on how skills and tools are being used and I want to capture them using standard tooling like OTEL regardless of agent harness because I don't want to have to rebuild a solution on hooks if I charge vendors. MCP does that because I can capture all of the telemetry there.
> jsonschema, openapi, all of it is a better integration point than MCP.
Your argument feels like asking why do we need OAuth and OIDC when we already have usernames and passwords. They solve different problems. A simple service can just use a secret key or username + password. But more complex enterprise scenarios need the structure and flow of OAuth, SAML, and SCIM.
Teams and enterprises had problems maintaining API keys long before there was MCP and they will have the same problems afterwards. The better teams and enterprises have had solutions for a long time.
And with people I guess I might actually mean not people but tokens everybody has to spend on keeping their environment self-adapting...
To make them interoperable so that the APIs have similar surface areas and can just be used without special skills, we could even come up with a standard API surface area and create a...protocol.
If you squint, the SKILL.md and the context that it takes up is literally the same thing as the MCP server and tool description. They are literally the same thing except one is server delivered and one is not.
MCP is "Let's use Google Sheets and have a server-managed experience". Everyone sees the same thing on the server in real time.
Skills is "Let me download the Excel and send it back to you". Why? How is this better? Every time I update the Excel, I have to add a `.2026.final.final2.xlsx` and everyone updates their copy...how is this the superior experience?