alt Hacker News> Most MCP servers still bloat up my context...
Modern harnesses don't do that, MCP is also progressive disclosure now. MCP tool descriptions aren't included anymore, and have to be found via tool_search. I actually find that to be a regression. Sometimes the models will start coding a python script for something that is already available via a pre-compiled MCP tool call.
In Claude Code you can enable / disable MCP servers at will, just use the /mcp command. You can also lock down permissions in claude -p headless mode to individual tools within an MCP server (eg maybe you only want to allow the reading tools, and none of the write-enabled tools for your automated session).
> Modern harnesses don't do that, MCP is also progressive disclosure now.
Last time I checked, and it may be different now, Claude Code used tool search only if context usage was greater than 10%.
Also, even with tool search, MCP uses about 1000 to 3000 tokens. A skill frontmatter on the other hand can be around 50.
And an mcp tool call result gets dumped into context in its entirety. A cli too can be filtered with grep/sed etc.
Skills are just a lot more efficient for most use cases.