Show HN: Ismcpdead.com – Live dashboard tracking MCP adoption and sentiment

One thing that MCP solves well, that neither CLI apps (like the `gh` CLI for example) nor letting your LLM call arbitrary APIs via CURL does, is setting granular permissions per tool.

Most agent frontends I've used like Claude Code only give you one level deep of CLI commands to authorize, which works fine for allowing commands like `docker build:*`. But for complex CLIs like GitHub, Azure, etc. it just doesn't scale well. It is absurd to grant Claude Code permission to `az vm:*` when that includes everything from `az vm show` to `az vm delete`. Likewise, the argument that says that you should just let your LLM call APIs directly via curl or whatever, does not hold up well when Claude Code just wants raw access to all of `curl:*`.

Meanwhile, MCP tools are (currently, at least in CC) managed at the individual tool level, which is very convenient for managing granular permissions.

Perhaps there could be some "CTCP" (CLI tool context protocol; the CCP acronym does not work well) where CLI apps could expose their available tools to the LLM, and it could then be dynamically loaded and managed at a granular level. But until then, I'm going to keep using MCP.

The token overhead is something I’ve been feeling lately. It’s annoying to see the context window shrink just from tool definitions that never even get triggered. For me, as a dev, I’d much rather just throw together a quick bash wrapper. But I can see the appeal for the non-technical side of our team who just want to 'plug and play' with AI connections without asking for a PR. It feels like MCP is aiming for that specific market gap.

I don't follow the cutting edge of AI practice super closely and I'm confused. Why are people trying to say MCP is dead? I've set up a few MCP servers (mostly language servers and servers to access my company's Confluence), and they seem genuinely very useful.

I'm not sure if it's irony or what, but I personally realized how absolutely goofy MCP is when I vibecoded with gemini in like 2 seconds a quite reasonable bash agent (for use with my local llama stuff.)

There's really not much of a point in "MCP" and/or formality here when working with LLMs, nothing bash etc can't do. If you want to use them, fine, but understand that at the other end you're always dealing with a nonzero amount of unpredictable vibes.

I don't think MCP is going anywhere, as much as I prefer CLIs or skills generally. Where MCP really shines is reducing friction and footguns for using a service, but at the expense of less versatility and expressiveness. You get a cookie-cutter way of using tools to interact with that service, which is easy to set up, doesn't require the user to download a CLI or have their agent interact with an API

For power users or technical users that want agents to compose data or use tools programmatically, that's less valuable, but for most people, a one-size-fits-all MCP service that is easy to use is probably best

There's the issues of dumping a bunch of tool definitions into context and eating a ton of tokens as well, but that seems more solvable

If anything, MCP needs to evolve or MCP client tooling to improve, and I could see the debate going away

I think MCP should not the main discussion point -- it certainly is the acronym that travels the world, but the real underlying features to track the sentiment of are "tools."

You can provide JSON schemas to LLMs about functions it can call, and they're trained to request executions. That's the game changing technology. That's the future here.

That's what makes claude code actually work, that's what makes a good chatbot useful, and that's what makes "AI" the most interesting right now.

MCP is many things, but one very good thing is that it's merely a way to bring tools to your client easily -- and gate data by the correct level of authorization, etc.

That is useful. We will likely have that in some form forever on. It may not be called MCP though.

Most of all these sources are on X (low quality garbage engagement bait posts) and SEO spam blogs that repeat the same talking points that we have all heard about MCPs. The other sources like Reddit, LinkedIn are non-existent on this site.

You will continue to hear repeated claims of MCPs being the next internet, the real "Web 3.0" or it will be the new way we will be interacting with the web - Nope, Never and Not a chance.

People talking about MCPs don't know that they are in a bubble.

It's not going to make sense for every company to release an MCP server. If you count use/integration in their internal workflows and agentic dev as adoption, it's probably near 100%.

What's the purpose of this? There is no replacement for MCP. We need a protocol for calling tools that works with structured outputs, this is what we have.

I thought "who exactly is saying it's dead?" and found your ranking gives it a 94/100 liveliness, so I guess not that many.

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The content analysis can be off. The following text has been flagged "negative":

> STOP asking Claude Code to design your apps. It’s great for logic, not design. Google Stitch 2.0 + Claude Code via MCP is the workflow that finally fixes the AI slop problem.

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