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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

> there's almost no reason to use MCPs if you are running a full-blown terminal agent

I disagree. Adding "https://mcp.linear.app/mcp" and having everything happen (discovery, usage, updates to the API, etc) without having to install or configure anything else locally is a big deal.

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Funny you mention Linear’s specifically, I just posted about moving to a CLI instead because of the MCP’s egregious token-usage [1]. While this doesn’t discount the points you mentioned, I think the context savings (which can be huge, I hadn’t listed all differences in that post) outweigh them specifically in Linear’s case. It is just too inefficient in that regard.

Edit: this of course says nothing about MCP vs API/CLI in general. It’s just a bad implementation by Linear.

1: https://thebiglog.com/links/linear-cli-instead-of-linear-mcp

This surprises me a bit. I've found much better token usage with a proper/efficient MCP as even with a deep /skill defining usage, parsing MCP results is generally just better/more efficient than parsing CLI results. I say this having written a CLI tool explicitly for harness usage, and leveraging MCPs for the same.

I'm sure there are bad MCPs and great CLI tools that parse poorly/well via harness, but I'd be curious on an better research study.

Your comment doesn’t contradict mine and mine doesn’t contradict yours. Linear’s MCP is just (very?) inefficient. I explain the source of the difference in the last two paragraphs.

How much are using Linear if token usage is a problem? Sounds like a case of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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