The Servers are Defective. They Hate the Tools!
Over the past year, most AI developers have learned how to configure their coding environment — optimizing for third-party packages, specialized processes, and personal preferences by adopting IDE/language/framework-agnostic primitives. MCP jumpstarted the context engineering revolution. In its infancy, even the experts had their fair share of complaints and points of confusion. So it's comical that the next major innovations centered around simple text files like AGENT.md, CLAUDE.md, MEMORY.md, and SKILLS.md. Exact configurations, formatting, and file structure may vary between providers and skills marketplaces, but overall, with the exception of bundled scripts for skills, most .md files are universally compatible between different systems — no coding required.
This is where things get interesting. When I decided to leave my corporate job to do AI all day, I was surprised to be faced with a seriously consequential decision right away. From this point on, my personality and everything I am would be defined by my choice to MCP or not MCP. You know what they say, "you're only as good as your hobbling along agent..." something like that. You're either an MCP person or anti-MCP person. That's it, two options, no room in the middle, you're either in or you're out...
Example Chat Message:
"I just watched a video and the YouTube fella already deleted his MCP servers live on his video and he did it, so must be right for me too...do what he do...DELETE! "
"Next, create markdown files to replace all the MCP servers and tools we just deleted. /ralph-loop" Muwahahaha GIVE ME SKILLS!
Of course, there's also a camp that says .md files degrade agent performance — so now you've deleted your MCP servers and their replacements are also under fire. Welcome to the discourse.
Now, even if you've never heard of MCP, SKILLS.md, etc. but have experience designing, building, etc. really any type of project-based work or creative space, you already know — these things never work that way, at least not for me. See Appendix A for an example of my game-changing decision analysis process.
Personally, I'm not going to delete any of the primitives or MCP servers, but when I hear the anti-MCP crowd voice frustrations, I imagine an interaction like this:
