The second wave of MCP: Building for LLMs, not developers
Vercel discusses evolving MCP implementations to be LLM-native rather than simple API wrappers. LLMs work differently than developers—they need higher-level tools that handle complete user intentions rather than individual API operations, enabling better orchestration and reducing repeated effort.
When the MCP standard first launched, many teams rushed to ship something. Many servers ended up as thin wrappers around existing APIs with minimal changes. A quick way to say "we support MCP".
At the time, this made sense. MCP was new, teams wanted to get something out quickly, and the obvious approach was mirroring existing API structures. Why reinvent when you could repackage?
But the problem with this approach is LLMs don’t work like developers. They don’t reuse past code or keep long term state. Each conversation starts fresh. LLMs have to rediscover which tools exist, how to use them, and in what order. With low level API wrappers, this leads to repeated orchestration, inconsistent behavior, and wasted effort as LLMs repeatedly solve the same puzzles.
MCP works best when tools handle complete user intentions rather than exposing individual API operations. One tool that deploys a project end-to-end works better than four tools that each handle a piece of the deployment pipeline.
Source: original entry ↗
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