MCP was always a bad idea?
Simon Willison’s Weblog Simon Willison
Opinion — commentary, not a factual news event.
A Hacker News discussion argues that MCP is not a bad idea and says it remains useful even when full terminal agents can call APIs directly. It points out that MCP helps provide controls so agents only access external services that are allowed, without direct access to API keys. The takeaway is that teams can use MCP to enable safer authentication, user-managed connections, and stronger audit logging as part of broader agent deployments.
Why it matters
My comment on MCP was always a bad idea? — Hacker News.This article entirely misses the value that MCP brings today. Sure, there's almost no reason to use MCPs if you are running a full-blown terminal agent (Claude Code, Codex, Meta Muse, OpenClaw etc) with unfettered internet access - just let it call APIs directly. If you want to operate something that's less YOLO than that, you'll find yourself wanting: Control over exactly which external services it can access A way to handle authentication that doesn't allow the agent to directly access API keys A sensible UI to allow users to connect and authenticate further services Strong audit logging for what's going on MCP makes all of that so much easier to provide. Thinking MCP is obsolete because full coding agents don't need it misses out on all of the other things we might want to build. Tags: hacker-news, model-context-protocol
