alt Hacker NewsThe reason for MCP is that you get better results with optimized prompts rather than using existing API docstrings. So everybody is going to end up adopting it in some shape or form.
It is a general concept, MCP itself is nothing special, it is that just that Anthropic formalized the observation first.
Tool call = API call + instructions for LLM
So vendors who provide APIs are going to write prompts, add a thin wrapper and out goes MCP. Or you create your own instructions and wrap in MCP to optimize your own workflows.
For pure OpenAPI APIs, why wouldn't you just update your API docstrings? Or maybe add a new attribute to the OpenAPI spec for LLM prompts?
I definitely see the value if you have a non standard API or undocumented API you wanted to expose.
And I see value in the resources and prompts parts of MCP, since they can offer clients more functionality that would be hard to put into an API spec.