Obvious example is a corporate chatbot (if it's using tools, probably for internal use). Non-technical users might be accessing it from a phone or locked-down corporate device, and you probably don't want to run a CLI in a sandbox somewhere for every session, so you'd like the LLM to interface with some kind of API instead.

Although, I think MCP is not really appropriate for this either. (And frankly I don't think chatbots make for good UX, but management sure likes them.)

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nostrebored 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why are they not calling APIs directly with strictly defined inputs and outputs like every other internal application?

The story for MCP just makes no sense, especially in an enterprise.

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ok_dad 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

MCP is an API with strictly defined inputs and outputs.

	▲	nostrebored 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is obviously not what it is. If I give you APIGW would you be able to implement an MCP server with full functionality without a large amount of middleware?

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woeirua an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

MCP really only makes sense for chatbots that don’t want to have per session runtime environments. In that context, MCP makes perfect sense. It’s just an adapter between an LLM and an API. If you have access to an execution engine, then yes CLI + skills is superior.