Ask HN: What's Your Opinion on MCP?

Seems like the #1 up trending topic for slightly spammy blog posts (like the “hiring is broken” spam that Triplebyte funded for years) lately as well as people asking open-ended questions about.

Frankly speaking, labeling MCP as "USB-C for AI" is an exaggerated metaphor. USB-C is a universal standard driven by IEEE and the open-source community, while MCP is fundamentally an ecosystem tightly controlled by Anthropic itself. Despite adopting the MIT license, MCP is far from the spirit of genuine openness. For instance, the official examples exclusively utilize Anthropic’s own API, and the system prompt of LLM requests is hidden within their SDK—precisely the part that's crucial for openness.

Anthropic has historically been cautious, even conservative, regarding open source. They refuse to open-source Claude's CLI and the underlying model code, which makes their sudden enthusiasm for launching MCP, presented as an "open platform," rather puzzling. Is this openness genuinely for the community, or merely an attempt to benefit their own ecosystem and interests?

In reality, MCP is more like a clunky dongle that awkwardly connects HDMI or TF card readers specifically to their own models, rather than establishing a genuinely universal standard. It's nearly impossible for MCP to change the conventional methods of using APIs and authentication into an "AI-native" approach. Due to security considerations, this design inherently caps the potential of both agents and MCP itself.

For developers, MCP imposes high environmental prerequisites, like Python, Node, or Docker, virtually excluding non-technical users. The installation process is the opposite of elegant.

In the long run, this superficially open yet fundamentally closed approach is unlikely to win sustained community trust or long-term success. Security concerns, the allocation of community benefits, and the inherently closed mindset of the corporation are critical issues that will inevitably haunt MCP’s future development.

Calling MCP "USB-C for AI" feels more like marketing hype than technological reality.

Answers immediate question about control, as it tends not to converge into more essential metrics. Am I safe to forget about and expect this not to surprise all, and is control.