alt Hacker News> MCP thinks it's for giving context to AI models. But really? It's just a really good protocol for making things talk to other things.
MCP has very little utility outside of LLMs. The article begins by saying "but what if we remove the AI", then goes back on that thesis by saying "but if there was an AI between these things, then it becomes a universal plugin system". Which is true, but its missing the critical bit: The AI itself is the universal plugin system, not MCP. And, beyond that, its not even the AI: Its natural language. Language is the universal plugin system.
Its not unbelievable that there exists an alternate reality where the Anthropic researchers that invented MCP instead simply leveraged a slightly extended form of OpenAPI specs. The only functional difference is that MCP was a stdin/stdout format first, and added HTTPS later, but sister problems in this domain like LSP just skipped stdin/stdout and went straight to locally-hosted HTTPS anyway. What matters isn't MCP, OpenAPI, or anything like that; what matters is the LLM itself, its tool calling capability, and the tool calling harness. The catalogue of available tools can be in any format; and, truly, the LLM does not care what format its in.
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> but if there was an AI between these things, then it becomes a universal plugin system
I've reread the article a couple times and I can't see where it says that you need to use an LLM to make it universal. I'm going to go so far as to say that it doesn't say that.
> then goes back on that thesis by saying "but if there was an AI between these things, then it becomes a universal plugin system".
This is neither an accurate quote of the article, nor an accurate paraphrase of something the article says, nor an accurate description of something subtly implied by the article without directly being said.
The article, in fact, gives an example without AI in the middle.
MCP's key innovation isn't the format but its unidirectional, stateless design pattern that makes it fundamentally easier to implement than bidirectional protocols like OpenAPI, which is why it's gaining traction as a universal connector beyond just LLM contexts.
And even then: the key value of MCP is that it's "simplified." Few servers are implementing anything you couldn't already do for years with their REST APIs.
And why? Because it dumbs it down to the point that the LLM can understand it (often, in part, by removing security concerns). But these are LLMs! They're supposed to be smart! Isn't it a supposedly temporary failure that I can't just point the LLM at an OpenAPI spec (or use HATEOAS) and be good to go?
Will this be doable in the next few months with better models? If so, why bother with MCP? If this won't be doable in the next few months / years, then how smart do we really expect these LLMs to be?