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Cheers, glad you like it! I justified the hours I invested by thinking I could search, download, and explore books directly from Claude Desktop. While the init

Cheers, glad you like it! I justified the hours I invested by thinking I could search, download, and explore books directly from Claude Desktop. While the initial steps are achievable with a CLI tool, the integration opens up new possibilities. Some general thoughts: - You’ll find the MCP mental model similar to the API one. - MCP integrations make it easier for non-technical users to access tools that were previously too technical. - An MCP integration implicitly respects a contract, unlike CLIs and GUIs which involve human aspects (aesthetics, information organisation, etc.). - MCP is an excuse for people to democratize data access. I wrote about this aspect here: https://x.com/iosifache/status/1941049600162574676?s=46 https://x.com/iosifache/status/1941049600162574676?s=46 And BTW, that’s a good idea! The functionality should probably also be exposed via CLI.

btown 1y ago
https://neon.com/blog/building-a-cli-client-for-model-context-protocol-servers https://neon.com/blog/building-a-cli-client-for-model-contex... might be of interest. An MCP server provides enough metadata and self-documentation that it's quite straightforward to make a MCP-agnostic CLI client that adapts an arbitrary MCP server into a set of flags that allow you to call its explicit tools with explicit arguments - without ever needing to involve an LLM in the mix! You could even have that CLI tool launch the MCP server as a local subprocess, if you wanted - again, all deterministically. And if you want to have an SDK in any language under the sun, once you have an MCP outputting reasonable tool descriptions, any LLM could make a best-in-class SDK for you in a heartbeat following that language's best practices. So it's not unreasonable for someone working on a greenfield project to make an MCP server first nowadays!
- iosifache 1y ago
  Agreed on all of this! I'm expecting MCP server creation to be natively supported by API libraries. The abstractions are very similar.
  - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
    FastAPI -> MCP is like 1 LoC.

btown 1y ago

https://neon.com/blog/building-a-cli-client-for-model-context-protocol-servers https://neon.com/blog/building-a-cli-client-for-model-contex... might be of interest. An MCP server provides enough metadata and self-documentation that it's quite straightforward to make a MCP-agnostic CLI client that adapts an arbitrary MCP server into a set of flags that allow you to call its explicit tools with explicit arguments - without ever needing to involve an LLM in the mix! You could even have that CLI tool launch the MCP server as a local subprocess, if you wanted - again, all deterministically. And if you want to have an SDK in any language under the sun, once you have an MCP outputting reasonable tool descriptions, any LLM could make a best-in-class SDK for you in a heartbeat following that language's best practices. So it's not unreasonable for someone working on a greenfield project to make an MCP server first nowadays!

iosifache 1y ago
Agreed on all of this! I'm expecting MCP server creation to be natively supported by API libraries. The abstractions are very similar.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  FastAPI -> MCP is like 1 LoC.