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I'm very bullish on MCP (or at least MCP "like" implementations), as they solve a lot of problems for non-devs as they're much easier and safer to add into ChatGPT, Claude and other desktop + web apps.

They provide a set of tools and a context when to use those tools (much like a packaged version of a CLI+API and a skill) which makes them more discoverable than other options.

I've got a few folks using my open source data storage MCP - https://github.com/ExpeditedProjects/hutchdb - now and it makes a lot more sense than any other implementation for what they're doing

I agree, I've found MCP to be a waste of time. Any HTTP API + OpenAPI spec is sufficient to get my agents to do anything they need to do. Bonus that it just uses regular HTTP semantics and all the tools and infrastructure that have been developed around that for decades. Instead of some inscrutable json RPC POST-only payload that needs tons of custom tooling for introspection, logging, etc.

So I’ve been working on a personal finance app, and I added an MCP to it. Connected my Claude to it, mainly for testing purposes.

The other day I was heading to Home Depot to buy some gardening stuff and I was asking some some questions around what I could plant at this time and still harvest before winter.

It answers me, then brings up how my home improvement budget is nearing its limit for the month. I then ask it how I’m doing on my wider retirement plan and it mentions I’m a few thousand dollars ahead of schedule for the plan. So I decided it’s okay to go over budget on that category this month.

This type of emergent behavior of agents you work with having more context about you, it’s very useful in ways I didn’t expect.

Is that really much different from building an API for your app though? Claude can use those just as easily.

MCP is essentially just a convention for APIs that standardizes the concept of a “resource”. It spares the LLM a lot of work figuring out what the “things” are in a problem domain, and how various endpoints relate to those “things”.

With authentication and on mobile?

I agree that on desktop it's not particularly relevant. Or through openclaw.

But for most people who use it through mobile, MCP solves some problems.

> With authentication and on mobile?

It's been a long time since I've used Claude, but is it not able to just use curl and an API key that it keeps in its "memory" on mobile? Or can it only use curl on the desktop?

I honestly don’t know if Claud can curl on mobile. I also haven’t had it try and store auth keys in memory.

Setting up an MCP connector took like 10 minutes for me, and it provides a nice little ui in Claude/chatgpt to make it easier for non-technical users to set up. I think of MCPs as a layer over APIs that makes things easier to interact with, similar to a frontend of a site.

Theoretically, no site needs a frontend. Yet they all do.

I’ll never understand the “I’ve never used it but am absolutely certain I would get zero value from it if I did” mentality.

I use MCP to accelerate CAD mould-making and for music production. I use it to avoid copying and pasting slack threads, and to let AI drive an eval system so I don’t have to manually configure things in a UI.

It’s just hard to imagine both not using it and being so sure it has no use.

Because you're a dev thinking for devs. No 60 year old is going to use Claude skills with the CLI. If my customers want their AI to interact with my product and MCP is the best way about it.

> If my customers want their AI to interact with my product and MCP is the best way about it.

Would be really interested to know how many of your customers actually use the MCP, who aren't already devs thinking like devs. I have doubts that many non-technical people are connecting AI to third-party services via MCP (or even using AI at all beyond "mundane" things like "generate an image of my cat as a clown" or "show me what my house looks like with blue paint and white trim").

I actually have data on this albeit it's a bit skewed. None of our clients are dev like folk but they are financial folks. We sell financial data for big players so not the analysts (seat cost is over 50k per year) and of our ~10k users within the last 6 months of us launching MCP we have 1500 DAUs on the MCP

That's quite interesting, thanks!

I use Pi and I’m coming to the conclusion that mostly all I need is a bash tool.

If you need to give access to your CRM/ERP system from ChatGPT / Claude desktop for non-tech users, MCP is the way.

I build integration for DollarDeploy but it was tricky.

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