MCP Protocol

The MCP marketplace went from zero to hoarder simulator in nine months. There are now hundreds of servers and most of them are bloated, half-finished, or written in Python with stdio bugs. Spoiler: you only need five.

The Setup

Every MCP server you install costs context window. The client sends the tool schema to the model on every turn. Install fifteen MCPs and half your prompt is just tool descriptions. Be ruthless.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["./mcp-servers/filesystem/dist/index.js", "/Users/aidenwood"]
    },
    "github": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["./mcp-servers/github/dist/index.js"],
      "env": { "GITHUB_TOKEN": "${GITHUB_TOKEN}" }
    },
    "postgres": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["./mcp-servers/postgres/dist/index.js"],
      "env": { "DATABASE_URL": "${SUPABASE_URL}" }
    },
    "playwright": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["./mcp-servers/playwright/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

The Money Pattern

Filesystem gives the model real file IO without bash gymnastics. GitHub turns "review my PR" into a single sentence. Postgres lets it query Supabase directly — I point this at the Rebuild Relief claims database and ask for ad-hoc analysis instead of writing one-off scripts. Playwright is the moment you stop screenshotting things manually. Puppeteer is the lighter alternative if you don't need codegen.

That's the whole list. Everything else is either covered by these five or is a niche integration you should build yourself.

The Catch

Too many MCPs and your context window becomes a tool catalogue, not a workspace. Every tool spec is a few hundred tokens. Install ten servers with five tools each and that's 10k tokens gone before your first message. Also: half the community servers leak secrets through verbose logging. Read the source before you trust it with your Pipedrive token.

The Verdict

Pick five, audit the source, pin the versions. Treat MCP servers like npm dependencies — every one you add is a liability. The agents-can-do-anything dream dies when the model spends half the turn deciding which of forty tools to use.