I spent more than one week, as a side project, to add an MCP server to my Cheméo website. Only 4 tools.

It took me way more time than expected, I was thinking: "Just wrap the REST API, 2h, done".

The MCP payload has nothing to do with the REST API one. Because you need to make it interpretable and context efficient even so it is structured data.

It was really interesting work and I suppose very little people are taking the time to rethink what is sent over the wire while creating a MCP server. If so, we would not have MCPs with the minimal payload being 500kB of JSON soup.

If you send my MCP through your "save token filter", I can guarantee you, that you will have trash down the line.

Yeah this is why a code execution sandbox so the ai can batch calls and select from the response format what it wants and limit the number of responses with instruction to be concise and preserve its context is a really cool thing to do.

This is where using a framework really shines. I used Laravel MCP which makes it trivial to add MCP tools to your CRUD.