What if you don’t need MCP at all?
December 3, 2025
I’m a simple boy, so I like simple things. Agents can run Bash and write code well. Bash and code are composable. So what’s simpler than having your agent just invoke CLI tools and write code? This is nothing new. We’ve all been doing this since the beginning. I’d just like to convince you that in many situations, you don’t need or even want an MCP server.
Let me illustrate this with a common MCP server use case: browser dev tools.
While MCPs occupy much attention right now, they also have significant drawbacks, including:
- Expense in terms of tokens
- Occupying a significant chunk of your context window
- Concerns about security and what Simon Wilson has coined the “lethal triad.”
But what if, in many cases, you don’t actually need an MCP? We can use tools instead. That’s what Mario Zechner explores here.
