Yes, absolutely. Can be done without it and fairly easy to even make it call remotely. The value is a framework that a client can use to make calls, however. And if I want to use Claude Desktop, much easier to use MCP to deal with the interconnect. Consider VSCode integration there is much there for me to learn. Here it's easy to use the MCP stuff but it certainly isn't necessary in a server deployment, for example. Although you may want to write a MCP server for your endpoints, if you make money off that stuff.