Load 84 MCP tools and 15,540 tokens are gone before you ask a question; after thirty minutes you've burned 40% of your context on tool definitions you didn't use. Holmes and Yilmaz make the case for CLI-first, and I've mostly come round: CLIs are debuggable, composable, and 92-98% cheaper in tokens. MCP still earns its keep for a few tools, but the default should flip.
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