> I still haven't figured out MCP or how/why to use them or why to bother. You run servers. I guess. It's too complex for my smol brain to understand
I know this is self-deprecating humor, but you do NOT have a smol brain: MCP servers are not as needed anymore now that Claude Code supports "Skills". They are also very token hungry as their spec is not lazy-loaded like the skills.
It was / and still is very useful if you collaborate with other engineers or want to perform operations in a non-stochastic fashion.
MCP servers are a way to expose a set of APIs (openAPI spec) to an LLM to perform the listed operations in a deterministic fashion (including adding some auditing, logging, etc). LLMs are fine-tuned for tool calling, so they do it really well and consistently.
Examples:
- Documentation / Glossary: MCP server that runs somewhere that reads a specific MD file or database that is periodically updated: think "what are my team members working on" / "let me look up what this means in our internal wiki".
- Gating operations behind authentication: a MCP server that is connected to your back office and allows you to upgrade a customer's plan, list existing customers, surface current. Super useful if you're a solo-founder for example.
I know this is self-deprecating humor, but you do NOT have a smol brain: MCP servers are not as needed anymore now that Claude Code supports "Skills". They are also very token hungry as their spec is not lazy-loaded like the skills.
It was / and still is very useful if you collaborate with other engineers or want to perform operations in a non-stochastic fashion.
MCP servers are a way to expose a set of APIs (openAPI spec) to an LLM to perform the listed operations in a deterministic fashion (including adding some auditing, logging, etc). LLMs are fine-tuned for tool calling, so they do it really well and consistently.
Examples:
- Documentation / Glossary: MCP server that runs somewhere that reads a specific MD file or database that is periodically updated: think "what are my team members working on" / "let me look up what this means in our internal wiki".
- Gating operations behind authentication: a MCP server that is connected to your back office and allows you to upgrade a customer's plan, list existing customers, surface current. Super useful if you're a solo-founder for example.