Huh, I think the author might be deliberately ignoring how MCP works?

- "CLIs need to be published, managed, and installed" -- same for MCP servers which you have to define in your config, and they frequently use some kind of "npx mcp-whatever" call.

- "Where do you put the API tokens required to authenticate?" -- where does an MCP server put them? In your home folder? Some .env file? The keychain? Same like CLI tools.

- "Some tools support installing skills via npx skills, but that only works in Codex and Claude Code, not Claude Cowork or standard Claude" -- sure, but you also can't universally define MCP servers for all those tools. You have to go ahead and edit the config anyway.

- "Using a skill often requires loading the entire SKILL.md into the LLM’s context window, rather than just exposing the single tool signature it needs" -- yeah, but it's on-demand rather than exposing ALL MCP servers' tool signatures. Have you ever tried to use playwright MCP?

I just don't buy the "without any setup" argument.