u/Key-Huckleberry-708

Everyone building AI agent tools reaches for MCP first. I did too. Then I started looking at what actually ends up in the context window. Every MCP server you connect loads its full tool schema before the agent reads a single message. Connect a few servers and a significant chunk of your context window is gone before any real work begins. Benchmarks comparing MCP to equivalent CLI calls show the gap is not small.

For personal automation, there is a simpler approach: a CLI bundled inside an Agent Skill. The agent runs one command. The CLI handles all the logic. No server to manage, no per-client configuration, no schema bloat sitting in context all session.