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Comment by ako | Hacker News Reader

I've been creating a cli tool with a focus on token efficiency. Dont see why cli could not be as token efficient as mcp. The cli has the option to output ascii, markdown and json.

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I'm working on a paper on this, if you are using a hypermedia-like system for progressive revelation of functionality you are likely to find that this chatty style of API is inefficient compared with an RPC-like system. The problem is architectural rather than representational.

I say this as a hypermedia enthusiast who was hoping to show otherwise.

the output format (ascii/json/markdown) is one piece, but the other side is input schema. mcp declares what args are valid and their types upfront, so the model can't hallucinate a flag that doesn't exist. cli tools don't expose that contract unless you parse --help output, which is fragile.

So far, cli --help seems to work quite well. I'm optimizing the cli to interact with the agent, e.g., commands that describe exactly what output is expected for the cli DSL, error messages that contain DSL examples that exactly describe the agent how to fix bugs, etc. Overall i think the DSL is more token efficient that a similar JSON, and easier to review for humans.

fair point on token efficiency -- dsls are usually tighter than json. where i see mcp still winning is tool discovery: the client learns what tools exist and what args they take without having to try calling them first or knowing the commands upfront. with cli you have to already know the tool exists.

This can be easily done using CLAUDE.md or similar. Easier than registering the MCP with the agent.

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