Very good points, but, I think this blog is pretty focussed on the developer use case for LLMs. It makes a lot more sense in chat style interfaces for connecting to non-dev tools or services with non technical users, if anything just from a UX perspective.
Yes, exactly. Not only can you not run CLIs in Chat interfaces, the services that non devs use often don’t even have CLIs to begin with.
Developers have a rich set of CLIs because they live in the terminal and built those tools for themselves.
Thank you, I was going to say something like this. I've been reading all the comments here and thinking, "do ChatGPT/LeChat/etc even allow running CLIs from their web or mobile interfaces?".
Exactly. and even if so, how are you going to safe guard tool access?
Imagine your favorite email provider has a CLI for reading and sending email - you're cool with the agent reading, but not sending. What are you going to do? Make 2 API keys? Make N API keys for each possible tool configuration you care about?
MCPs make this problem simple and easy to solve. CLIs don't.
I don't think OpenClaw will last that long without security solved well - and MCPs seem to be obvious solution, but actively rejected by that community.