I definitely agree with you, but it’s probably a little apples and oranges. MCP server is a one stop shop for discovering “tools”. To leverage a CLI tool “from scratch”, your agent has to do a web search to find if a CLI tool even exists, figure out how to install it, install it. Not saying those are impossible, but it’s way less automated and “deterministic” than what MCP provides.

I don't quite follow your meaning. Are you referring to an MCP registry of some kind, that the agent would operate itself to discover and install new tools? I would say that is a separate concern from the tool form factor itself. Also, there are CLI-focused solutions to this as well (e.g. brew, npm).