It’s not, they are a big unlock when using something like cursor or copilot. I think people who say this don’t quite know what MCP is, it’s just a thin wrapper around an API that describes its endpoints as tools. How is there not a ton of value in this?

MCP is the future in enterprise and teams.

It's as you said: people misunderstand MCP and what it delivers.

If you only use it as an API? Useless. If you use it on a small solo project? Useless.

But if you want to share skills across a fleet of repos? Deliver standard prompts to baseline developer output and productivity? Without having to sync them? And have it updated live? MCP prompts.

If you want to share canonical docs like standard guidance on security and performance? Always up to date and available in every project from the start? No need to sync and update? MCP resources.

If you want standard telemetry and observability of usage? MCP because now you can emit and capture OTEL from the server side.

If you want to wire execution into sandboxed environments? MCP.

MCP makes sense for org-level agent engineering but doesn't make sense for the solo vibe coder working on an isolated codebase locally with no need to sandbox execution.

People are using MCP for the wrong use cases and then declaring them excess when the real use case is standardizing remote delivery and of skills and resources. Tool execution is secondary.