I fully agree with the comment but CLI tools don't do auth and session management in a consistent way. Besides, imagine if now every vendor out there need to distributed custom binaries for their services. Some of them do. Many don't.. but overall it is just increased security risk for the end user when the functionality that is delivered is simply an interface to an API.

I remember that a llm agents often store those in clear text files (I think claude-code beeing one of them). Many of the CLIs I use have a better secret hygiene than that i.e. allow passwords commands or use secret apis.

MCP tools do not do auth and session management in a consistent way based on just the seven or so I use regularly.

And how do the agents use the CLI tools, exactly?

Same way you would in a terminal.

You can provide the agent details to use either through skills or commands that provide reference and context to use. The agent can load when needed.

Having cli tool access provides me option to run the tools when I want to look at or do something as well.