Re:MCP is dead. Long live the CLI
by sarkarsh on Monday March 02, 2026 @01:54PM
(#47222358)
Most of this thread is debating MCP as a CLI wrapper, and for that it's clearly worse. More tokens, no piping, another process to manage.
But the real use case for MCP isn't replacing git or jq. It's giving agents persistent state across sessions. When I close the terminal my agent forgets everything. What it was working on, what it decided, what it tried that failed. Next session starts from zero.
An MCP server that holds structured project state -- tasks, decisions, context -- lets the agent pick up where it left off. It queries what happened last session, updates progress, records new decisions. That's fundamentally different from running a CLI command and parsing stdout. You need a server that maintains state and exposes typed operations on it.
The framing should be: CLI for stateless operations (builds, git, file manipulation). MCP for stateful integrations where the agent needs memory that outlives the session.
Re:MCP is dead. Long live the CLI
by ejholmes on Monday March 02, 2026 @02:02PM
(#47222471)
I think that's a fair argument. I'd push back a bit on that being unique to MCP. Agent browser (https://github.com/vercel-labs/agent-browser) handles persistent sessions just fine as a CLI.
But the real use case for MCP isn't replacing git or jq. It's giving agents persistent state across sessions. When I close the terminal my agent forgets everything. What it was working on, what it decided, what it tried that failed. Next session starts from zero.
An MCP server that holds structured project state -- tasks, decisions, context -- lets the agent pick up where it left off. It queries what happened last session, updates progress, records new decisions. That's fundamentally different from running a CLI command and parsing stdout. You need a server that maintains state and exposes typed operations on it.
The framing should be: CLI for stateless operations (builds, git, file manipulation). MCP for stateful integrations where the agent needs memory that outlives the session.