> Markdown version of [/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1738-the-mcp-haters-are](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1738-the-mcp-haters-are). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md).

---

# The MCP haters are half right


- **Event:** World Congress 2026 North America

## Description

Most AI agents misuse MCP and treat tools as prompt-time function calls: tool definitions and results are repeatedly injected into the context, tokens are wasted, and context rots. The result? Slower, less reliable agents, and the misleading conclusion that “MCP sucks, CLIs are better.”

To challenge this narrative and show how agents can get the best of both MCP and CLI, we’ve built `mcpc`, an open-source universal CLI client for MCP. It maps MCP operations to intuitive CLI commands, which agents quickly pick up through `--help` without external skills.

It turns out, CLI is the perfect local interface for agents to interact with MCP, giving them access to full protocol capabilities, including modern features like code mode or progressive tool discovery, through a single `Bash()` tool call, while leveraging MCP’s standard remote interface for server discovery, authentication, payments, and access control.

To once and for all kill the MCP vs. CLI debate and show those two technologies are not exclusive but complementary, we’ll present evals comparing the performance of agents using naive MCP, modern MCP, native CLIs, other MCP CLIs, and `mcpc`, in various real-world scenarios.

## Speaker

### [Vojta Kopal](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@vojta-kopal)

Head of Data at Apify


## Related talks at this congress

- [Making (and Breaking) Agents by Adding 1,000 MCP Tools](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1730-making-and-breaking) — Guillaume Lebedel
- [MicroAgents: The Microservices of the Agentic Era](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1692-microagents-the) — Ashish Shubham
- [Reinventing Incident Response with AI Agents and MCP](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1429-reinventing-incident) — Jayant Tyagi
- [AI-Powered Incident Triage: How We Built GenAI Agents with MCPs to Automate On-Call Workflows](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-north-america/sessions/1682-ai-powered-incident) — Prakshal Doshi

## Watch remotely

Can’t make it to San José? Watch this session live with Pro. You also get:

- All full videos, bookmarks, and playlists
- World Congress livestreams

[See pricing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/pricing)

## Links

- [Get tickets](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/world-congress-north-america/tickets)