MCP isn't going anywhere. Some developers can't seem to see past their terminal or dev environment when it comes to MCP. Skills, etc do not replace MCP and MCP is far more than just documentation searching.

MCP is a great way for an LLM to connect to an external system in a standardized way and immediately understand what tools it has available, when and how to use them, what their inputs and outputs are,etc.

For example, we built a custom MCP server for our CRM. Now our voice and chat agents that run on elevenlabs infrastructure can connect to our system with one endpoint, understand what actions it can take, and what information it needs to collect from the user to perform those actions.

I guess this could maybe be done with webhooks or an API spec with a well crafted prompt? Or if eleven labs provided an executable environment with tool calling? But at some point you're just reinventing a lot of the functionality you get for free from MCP, and all major LLMs seem to know how to use MCP already.

I think it will stick around, but I don't think it will have another year where it's the hot thing it was back in January through May.

For connecting agents to third-party systems I prefer CLI tools, less context bloat and faster. You can define the CLI usage in your agent instructions. If the MCP you're using doesn't exist as a CLI, build one with your agent.

MCP or skills? Can a skill negate the need for MCP. In addition there was a YC startup who is looking at searching docs for LLMs or similar. I think MCP may be less needed once you have skills, openapi specs, and other things that LLMs can call directly.