Something that I struggle with in regards to MCP and no-ones really touches on: We don't even know if this "general" Chatbot paradigm will persist. So far I got the feeling that we end up building specialized apps for specialized use-cases (e.g. cursor or claude code for coding) These then bring their own set of tools (for file writing, reading, running bash commands, etc.) and don't really need MCP (except for very niche use-cases maybe).
I don't really see the point yet where LLMs become so good that I throw my specialized LLM tools out and do everything in one claude desktop window. It simply doesn't work generic enough.
Also... if you end up building something custom, you end up having to reimplement the tool calling again anyways. MCP really is just for the user facing chat agents, which is just one section of AI applications. It's not as generically applicable as implied.
Interestingly, my criticism is exactly the opposite of yours. I think as LLMs become more and more capable (and crucially multi-modal) we will need the external tools less and less.
For example, why would I want an MCP that can drive Photoshop on my behalf? Like I say to the LLM "remove this person from the photo" and it opens Photoshop, uses the magic wand select tool, etc. That is silly in my mind. I want to say "remove this person" and the LLM sends me a perfect image with the person gone.
I extend that idea for just about any purpose. "Edit this video in such and such a way". "Change this audio in such and such a way". "Update this 3d model in such and such a way". No tool needed at all.
And that will lead to more multi-modal input. Like, if I could "mark up" a document with pen marks, or an image. I want tools that are a bit better than language for directing the attention of the model towards the goals I want them to achieve. Those will be less "I am typing text into a chat interface with bubbles" but the overall conversational approach stays intact.
> We don't even know if this "general" Chatbot paradigm will persist
It won't. These startups are selling the sci-fi robot assistant dream; think Tony Stark or Captain Picard or whatever. Once the novelty wears off nobody is going to pay big bucks for what is essentially just childhood nostalgia.
For everything else you'd want hyperspecialized language manipulation tools.
If you have a better idea you could get millions in VC funding to pursue that. Chat is where it's at. It's fine to think that it's not gonna be the be-all and end-all of AI, but it's pretty fundamentally how we interact with each other, so I don't see it going away any time soon. There's also a thing as being too generic. So really they just hit this sweet spot.
> If you have a better idea you could get millions in VC funding to pursue that.
I would like to see:
- Some Smalltalk-like IWE (Integrated Work Environment), creating prompt snippets and chaining them together.
- A spreadsheet like environment. Prompt's result are always tables and you have the usual cell reference available.