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thellimist

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Thursday February 26, 2026 @06:36PM (#47173886)
From use case point of view

skills are unstructured. MCP is structured.

You don't want stripe skill. You want stripe MCP of CLI to interact with. When stripe does an update you want to have it.

I didn't go into technical details or anything. Just laid the most important use case that skills cannot be sufficient

Re: on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:59AM (#47167008)
Does anyone else similar outputs?
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:01AM (#47166214)
fixed - github.com/thellimist/clihub
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:01AM (#47166205)
If you read my posts before 2023, it's same style.

I guess my thinking way is similar to LLMs, has clear structure.

I used to have more grammar issues, that LLMs fix, but the high level outline etc. are actually how I think about it. If it's not, I modify it

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Thursday February 26, 2026 @08:59AM (#47166183)
Rust doesn't compile different machines well. So choose Go
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @06:13PM (#47159405)
I did - I have my almost a dozen CLIs that are custom built that I'm using. Very reliable.

It still needs to do discovery (--help etc.), always gets the job done

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:58PM (#47159259)
did you check the token usage comparison between cmcp and cli?
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:19PM (#47158859)
This is cool!

I was actually thinking if I should support daemons just to support playwright. Now I don't have a use case for it

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:18PM (#47158844)
FYI the blog has direct comparison to Anthropic’s Tool Search.

Regardless, most MCPs are dumping. I know Cloudflare MCP is amazing but other 1000 useful MCPs are not.

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:15PM (#47158800)
Ofc it is written by ai, I have a skill for it -

https://github.com/thellimist/thellimist.github.io/blob/mast...

https://github.com/thellimist/thellimist.github.io/blob/mast...

I dump a voice message, then blog comes out. Then I modify a bunch of things, and iterate 1-2 hours to get it right

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:06PM (#47158702)
I actually want to combine this and CLIHub into a directory where someone can download all the official MCPs or CLIs (or MCP to CLIs) with a single command
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:56PM (#47158534)
I don't prefer to use online skills where half has malware

Official MCPs are trusted. Official MCPs CLIs are trusted.

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:51PM (#47158475)
I was happy with playwright like MCPs that require the daemon so didn't convert them to CLIs.

My use cases are almost all 3rd party integrations.

Have you seen any improvements converting on MCPs that require persistency into CLI?

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:50PM (#47158451)
Nice!

Compared both

---

TL;DR CLIHUB compiles MCP servers into portable, self-contained binaries — think of it like a compiler. Best for distribution, CI, and environments where you can't run a daemon.

mcpshim is a runtime bridge — think of it like a local proxy. Best for developers juggling many MCP servers locally, especially when paired with LLM agents that benefit from persistent connections and lightweight aliases.

---

https://cdn.zappy.app/b908e63a442179801e406b01cf412433.png (table comparison)

---

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:34PM (#47158221)
What do you mean?
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:33PM (#47158202)
Main differences are

CLIHub

- written in go

- zero-dependency binaries

- cross-compilation built-in (works on all platforms)

- supports OAuth2 w/ PKCE, S2S, Google SA, API key, basic, bearer. Can be extended further

MCPorter

- TS

- huge dependency list

- runtime dependency on bun

- Auth supports OAuth + basic token

- Has many features like SDK, daemons (for certain MCPs), auto config discovery etc.

MCPorter is more complete tbh. Has many nice to have features for advanced use cases.

My use case is simple. Does it generate a CLI that works? Mainly oauth is the blocker since that logic needs to be custom implemented to the CLI.

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:23PM (#47158073)
Good catch.

I didn't release the website yet. I'll remove the link

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:21PM (#47158044)
personal experience, definitely yes. You can try it out with `gh` rather than `Github MCP`. You'll see the difference immediately (espicially more if you have many MCPs)
Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:20PM (#47158031)
I can give example.

LLM only know `linear` tool exists.

I ask "get me the comments in the last issue"

Next call LLM does is

`linear --help 2>&1 | grep -i -E "search|list.issue|get.issue")` then `linear list-issues --raw '{"limit": 3}' -o json 2>&1 | head -80)` then `linear list-comments --issue-id "abc1ceae-aaaa-bbbb-9aaa-6bef0325ebd0" 2>&1)`

So even the --help has filtering by default. Current models are pretty good

Re:I made MCP cheaper on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:16PM (#47157970)
It's the same from functionality perspective. The schema's are converted to CLI versions of it. It's a UI change more than anything.
For humans - more documentation is bad. Simple documentation is generally better. For AI - what type of documentation is better? Is code + RAG sufficient? Do we need more text format summaries?

What is the purpose of this particular approach?

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2021) on Saturday November 06, 2021 @02:13AM (#29127934)
Haystack (YC W21) | Remote | Full-time | usehaystack.io Haystack helps dev teams get incredibly good at delivering software. We do that using analytics and alerts pulled straight from Github.

Haystack is a fast growing early startup. From 0 to 1.5 years companies like Microsoft, The Economist, Cameo, Indiegogo and many more are using Haystack daily!

We are looking for:

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Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021) on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:33AM (#28798053)
Haystack (YC W21) | Remote | Full-time | usehaystack.io

Haystack helps dev teams get incredibly good at delivering software. We do that using analytics and alerts pulled straight from Github.

Haystack is a fast growing early startup. From 0 to 1.5 years companies like Microsoft, The Economist, Cameo, Indiegogo and many more are using Haystack daily!

We are looking for:

* Full Stack Engineer: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/haystack/jobs/znulCUM-....

* Account Executive: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/haystack/jobs/40uM4uM-...

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Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021) on Friday September 03, 2021 @04:15PM (#28408852)
Haystack (YC W21) | Remote | Full-time | usehaystack.io

Haystack helps dev teams get incredibly good at delivering software. We do that using analytics and alerts pulled straight from Github.

Haystack is a fast growing early startup. From 0 to 1.5 years companies like Microsoft, The Economist, Cameo, Indiegogo and many more are using Haystack daily!

We are looking for:

* Full Stack Engineer: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/haystack/jobs/znulCUM-...

* Sr. Sales Executive: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/haystack/jobs/40uM4uM-...

Interested? Please send me an email at [email protected]

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