Integrations And ConnectorsIntegration

CLI-first tool-connection hierarchy for Claude Code (CLI > API > MCP)

March 30, 2026Aakash Gupta

Aakash Gupta relayed Andrej Karpathy’s preference for CLI integrations over API and MCP because MCP connections consume context immediately. This frames MCP as costly in large-context agent setups.

Andrej Karpathy said it himself. The hierarchy for connecting tools to Claude Code: CLI at the top, API in the middle, MCP at the bottom.
MCPs eat context the moment they connect.
Every MCP you load is sitting in your context window doing nothing until you call it.
Aakash Gupta
mcpclicontextclaudeapiclaude codetokens context

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