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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

MCP without AI is just APIs.

MCP is already a useless layer between AIs and APIs, using it when you don't even have GenAI is simply idiotic.

The only redeeming quality of MCP is actually that it has pushed software vendors to expose APIs to users, but just use those directly...

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And that’s the whole point - it’s APIs we did not have. Now app developers are encouraged to have a public, user friendly, fully functional API made for individual use, instead of locking them behind enterprise contracts and crippling usage limits.

MCPs don't change that at all lol

Right, but we would have had them even if MCP did not exist. The need to access those APIs via LLM-based "agents" would have existed without MCP.

At work I built an LLM-based system that invoke tools. We started before MCP existed, and just used APIs (and continue to do so).

Its engineering value is nil, it only has marketing value (at best).

As https://www.stainless.com/blog/mcp-is-eating-the-world--and-... recaps, tool calling existed before MCP, some vague standards existed, nothing took off, no really normal users don't want to just download the OpenAPI spec.

Anthropic wants to define another standard now btw https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/desktop-extensions

Normal users don't know what MCP is and will never use an MCP server (knowingly or unknowingly) in their life. They use ChatGPT through the web UI or the mobile app, that's it.

MCP is for technical users.

(Maybe read the link you sent, it has nothing to do with defining a new standard)

Normal users will increasingly use MCP servers without even knowing they do so - it will be their apps. And having e.g. your music player or your email client light up in the ChatGPT app as something that you can tell it to automate is not just for technical users.

> it’s APIs we did not have

Isn't that what we had about 20 years ago (web 2.0) until they locked it all up (the APIs and feeds) again? ref: this video posted 18 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

(Rewatching it in 2025, the part about "teaching the Machine" has a different connotation now.)

Maybe it's that the protocol is more universal than before, and they're opening things up more due to the current trends (AI/LLM vs web 2.0 i.e. creating site mashups for users)? If it follows the same trend then after a while it will become enshittified as well.

Do you have an example of a company who previously had an undiscoverable API now offering a MCP-based alternative?

I do have one: Atlassian now allows connecting their MCP server (Jira et al) for personal use with a simple OAuth redirect, where before you needed to request API keys via your org, which is something no admin would approve unless you were working specifically on internal tooling/integrations.

Another way to phrase it is that MCP normalizes individual users having access to APIs via their clients, vs the usual act of connecting two backend apps where the BE owns a service key.

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