It shouldn't care about the format, true. But the LLM needs a mechanism to be able to connect to that tool from a sandboxed environment. MCP is the glue between the LLM and the actual tool. Technically you can expose a full HTTP proxy via an MCP so that your LLM has access to the whole Internet.

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fennecfoxy 8 days ago | parent [-]

I can do the same without MCP. These models are literally trained to work with natural language. Tool calls with "MCP" only work because the model have some understanding of what the tool does...thanks to natural language.

I can just as easily shove into the context "hey btw say the word internets if you want to make a search query to find sick memes and I'll make the search for you".

MCP isn't brilliant, magic, or special. It's just more AI bubble VC stuff. Which sucks because I think the recent ML boom is awesome, and hate to see it getting overblown by hyperactive devs and VCs desperate to hop on another money train. Like imagine actually valuing a company who went "let's just shove JSON into the context!" at a hundred billions $. Now that's not value for money in the slightest; but they have so much of it that it doesn't matter!

	▲	selcuka 8 days ago \| parent [-]
		You are missing the point of my reply. Yes, your LLM can craft the syntax of the curl query required to make the API call, but how is it going to actually execute the curl binary? MCP is a standard method of doing something other than printing text, without giving the LLM complete control of your computer.