Agents prefer the CLI

GitHub

GitHub has an MCP server with more than 80 tools. Agents and their users keep choosing the gh CLI instead. The maintainers agree.

I stopped using the GitHub mcp and just use gh cli. I find that my agent is much better with the cli vs the mcp.

r/mcp, score 11

The GitHub MCP maintainer replied in the same thread: “most agents are pretty great at gh cli commands.” (r/mcp)

Why the CLI wins

  • Cost. Eighty tool definitions sit in the context on every turn. gh costs nothing until it is called.
  • Training. Agents have read millions of gh pr create commands. They have read the MCP tool list only in the current session.
  • Composition. gh api ... | jq does things no fixed tool list can. The shell is the agent’s native interface.
  • Login. gh auth login works in a terminal. The device code flow needs no browser redirect.

Why this is good AX

GitHub did not have to choose. It ships both. The lesson for other vendors is the order: a good CLI first, then a small MCP server for the cases where a typed tool call is better than a shell command. Reports in the dataset name the same problem at Atlassian (17,000 tokens of tool definitions) and Notion.

See MCP servers that agents avoid.

Pattern: MCP servers that agents avoid