MCP literally is the "something else", if you have a better idea in mind, now is the time to bring it out before the MCP train is going too fast to catch up.
Code (including shell scripting) allows the LLM to manipulate the results programmatically, which allows for filtering, aggregation and other logic to occur without multiple round trips between the agent and tool(s). This results in substantially less token usage, which means less compute waste, less cost, and less confusion/"hallucination" on the LLM's part.
If one comes to the same conclusion that many others have (including CloudFlare) that code should be the means by which LLMs interface with the world, then why not skip writing an MCP server and instead just write a command-line program and/or library (as well as any public API necessary)?
