alt Hacker NewsI'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.
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bear3r • yesterday at 7:01 PM
the output format (ascii/json/markdown) is one piece, but the other side is input schema. mcp declares what args are valid and their types upfront, so the model can't hallucinate a flag that doesn't exist. cli tools don't expose that contract unless you parse --help output, which is fragile.
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I'm working on a paper on this, if you are using a hypermedia-like system for progressive revelation of functionality you are likely to find that this chatty style of API is inefficient compared with an RPC-like system. The problem is architectural rather than representational.
I say this as a hypermedia enthusiast who was hoping to show otherwise.