alt Hacker NewsMCP has one thing going for it as an agentic API standard: token efficiency
The single-request-for-all-abilities model + JSON RPC is more token efficient than most alternatives. Less flexible in many ways, but given the current ReAct, etc. model of agentic AI, in which conversations grow geometrically with API responses, token efficiency is very important.
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But the flip side of this is that the tools themselves take up a ton of token context. So if you have one mcp it’s great but there is an upper bound that you hit pretty quick of how many tools you can realistically expose to an agent without adding some intermediary lookup layer. It’s not compact enough of a spec and doesn’t have lazy loading built into it
I've been creating a cli tool with a focus on token efficiency. Dont see why cli could not be as token efficient as mcp. The cli has the option to output ascii, markdown and json.
But they're not token efficient. Take the terraform example from the post. Plan JSON is massive. You're not saving tokens by using a Terraform MCP and shoving an entire plan into context. Composition allows for efficient token use.