What happened
Simon Willison published a comment responding to a Hacker News piece titled 'MCP was always a bad idea?', arguing it 'entirely misses the value that MCP brings today.' He concedes terminal agents with unfettered internet access have little need for MCP: 'just let it call APIs directly.' [1]
What Willison says MCP is for
For setups less autonomous than a full terminal agent, Willison lists four needs MCP addresses: control over which external services the agent can access; authentication that keeps API keys out of the agent's reach; a UI for users to connect and authenticate further services; and strong audit logging. He frames these as the things 'we might want to build' beyond coding agents. [1]
Sources
- MCP was always a bad idea?
Simon Willison · Reporting · Sep 20, 2026
“MCP was always a bad idea?”
“MCP makes all of that so much easier to provide.”