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  2. Simon Willison — Creator of Datasette; co-creator of Django/

MCP was always a bad idea?

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-23)

  • Simon Willison argues against the idea that the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is obsolete, stating that articles claiming so “entirely miss the value that MCP brings today.”
  • He explains that while full-blown terminal agents (like Claude Code, Codex, Meta Muse, OpenClaw) might directly call APIs, MCP remains vital for “less YOLO” operations requiring control over external service access, secure authentication without direct API key exposure, a sensible UI for users, and strong audit logging.
  • The practical takeaway is that dismissing MCP as obsolete based solely on the capabilities of unfettered coding agents overlooks its utility for building more controlled, secure, and user-friendly agent applications.