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What if you don't need MCP at all?

(mariozechner.at)
237 points jdkee | 10 comments | 16 Nov 25 18:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.454s | source | bottom
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whoknowsidont ◴[16 Nov 25 21:37 UTC] No.45948637[source]▶
MCP was a really shitty attempt at building a plugin framework that was vague enough to lure people into and then allow other companies to build plugin platforms to take care of the MCP non-sense.

"What is MCP, what does it bring to the table? Who knows. What does it do? The LLM stuff! Pay us $10 a month thanks!"

LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP.

Not only do you not need MCP, but you should actively avoid using it.

Stick with tried and proven API standards that are actually observable and secure and let your models/agents directly interact with those API endpoints.

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jcelerier ◴[17 Nov 25 04:18 UTC] No.45950817[source]▶
> LLM's have function / tool calling built into them. No major models have any direct knowledge of MCP.

but the major user interfaces for operating LLMs do and that's what matters

> Not only do you not need MCP, but you should actively avoid using it.

> Stick with tried and proven API standards that are actually observable and secure and let your models/agents directly interact with those API endpoints.

so what's the proven and standard API I can use to interact with ableton live? blender? unity3d? photoshop?

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1. nilslice ◴[17 Nov 25 05:23 UTC] No.45951039[source]▶
What do all of the links below have in common? Do you know of another way you can control all of those applications via LLMs? Computer use?

https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp

https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp

https://github.com/CoplayDev/unity-mcp

https://github.com/mikechambers/adb-mcp

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2. growt ◴[17 Nov 25 06:27 UTC] No.45951271[source]▶
The mcp part is not essential for the actual controlling of the applications. You could “rip out” the mcp functionality and replace it with something else. The only reason why the authors chose mcp is most likely that it was the first and therefore most common plugin interface for llm tools.
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3. Zetaphor ◴[17 Nov 25 06:40 UTC] No.45951322{3}[source]▶
Isn't that the point they are making? MCP is useful because everyone is using it, not because it has a technical advantage over rolling your own solution. It won mindshare because of marketing and a large company pushing it.

I've actually taken to both approaches recently, using the mcp-client package to give me an interface to a wide array of prebuilt tools in my non-LLM application. I could have written or sourced 10 different connectors, or I can write one client interface and any tool I plug in shares the same standard interface as all the others.

4. theshrike79 ◴[17 Nov 25 07:01 UTC] No.45951403{3}[source]▶
MCP literally is the "something else", if you have a better idea in mind, now is the time to bring it out before the MCP train is going too fast to catch up.
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5. TranquilMarmot ◴[17 Nov 25 07:07 UTC] No.45951426{3}[source]▶
Unfortunately, most standards that we end up with are only standard because they're are widely used and not because they are the best or they make the most sense.
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6. whoknowsidont ◴[17 Nov 25 16:21 UTC] No.45955037[source]▶
Can you do yourself a favor and look at the source code and tell me why you think MCP is necessary here?

I mean you just took some examples and went "See MCP!" without any actual understanding of what that code is doing.

All of these have underlying API's that have exactly ZERO need for MCP. All of this functionality already exists and can be used with LLM's.

* https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209072009-Install...

* https://docs.blender.org/api/current/info_quickstart.html

* https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.2/Documentation/ScriptReferenc...

The most hilarious quote from one of those projects:

>The proxy server is required because the public facing API for UXP Based JavaScript plugin does not allow it to listen on a socket connection (as a server) for the MCP Server to connect to (it can only connect to a socket as a client).

Maybe that should have been the sign that this was completely unnecessary and stupid?

>Do you know of another way you can control all of those applications via LLMs?

Seriously. This becoming a bad joke. I mean conceptually, what did you think was happening here? MCP was just magically doing something that didn't already exist before?

It's a waste of effort and time. Do not use MCP.

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7. whoknowsidont ◴[17 Nov 25 16:22 UTC] No.45955046{4}[source]▶
It's not even a standard. It's literally not doing anything here. Not only "can" you rip out MCP there is zero technical reason for any of those things to be an "MCP" in the first place.
8. cstrahan ◴[17 Nov 25 19:19 UTC] No.45957037{4}[source]▶
(Not OP)

This is pretty well established. See for example:

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/code-execution-with-mc...

https://blog.cloudflare.com/code-mode/

Code (including shell scripting) allows the LLM to manipulate the results programmatically, which allows for filtering, aggregation and other logic to occur without multiple round trips between the agent and tool(s). This results in substantially less token usage, which means less compute waste, less cost, and less confusion/"hallucination" on the LLM's part.

If one comes to the same conclusion that many others have (including CloudFlare) that code should be the means by which LLMs interface with the world, then why not skip writing an MCP server and instead just write a command-line program and/or library (as well as any public API necessary)?

9. nilslice ◴[17 Nov 25 22:04 UTC] No.45958897{3}[source]▶
Idk what you think you have to gain with your stance lol

No one looks at MCP and sees "magic", they just see "finished integration". Something you can pretty much use straight away. That's the point.

10. jcelerier ◴[18 Nov 25 13:56 UTC] No.45966010{3}[source]▶
So again, how do I automate Ableton live over a network socket with a standard API? I don't know if you've read the remote control API but it doesn't open a magic socket to remote control Live, you have to code the entire integration and protocol yourself to map whatever API messages you want to Live actions manually.

Let's forget about LLMs completely as they are only tangentially relevant to the benefits of MCP. I want to write 15 lines of python that - no matter the software - is going to trigger the "play" button/action in that software. E.g. I want to hit "play" in both Ableton, Unity and Blender without having to write three times the code, without having to manually write them each an extension plug-ins. How do you do that, today, 2025-11-17 ?