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Comment by phpnode | Hacker News Reader

I don't doubt that CLIs + skills are a good alternative to MCP in some contexts, but if you're building an app for non-developers and you need to let users connect it to arbitrary data sources there's really no sensible, safe path to using CLIs instead. MCP is going to be around for a long time, and we can expect it to get much better than it is today.

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>we can expect it to get much better than it is today

Which is not a high bar to clear. It literally only got where it is now because execs and product people love themselves another standard, because if they get their products to support it they can write that on some excel sheet as shipped feature and pin it on their chest. Even if the standard sucks on a technical level and the spec changes all the time.

This is excessively cynical, it's a useful tool despite its shortcomings.

You could strip away 90% of the spec and it would be even more useful. In fact standardizing the tool definitions and prompt formats would probably have done more if you're serious about supporting a certain set of tools between various LLM providers.

Why? The llm can install cli through apt-get or equivalent and non developers wouldn’t need to know

well I'm sure you can understand the dangers of that, and why that won't work if your app is hosted and doesn't run on users' local machines

What non developer would have apt installed on their device though

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