Quoting Sean Lynch: MCP's Real Value Is Auth Flow Isolation, Not Tool Invocation
Simon Willison's Weblog·38 days ago·Commentary
In a Hacker News comment highlighted by Simon Willison, Sean Lynch reframes MCP's value proposition away from tool invocation mechanics and toward authentication architecture. He argues that keeping auth flows outside the agent's context window — and potentially outside the harness entirely — is MCP's genuine differentiator over simpler alternatives like skills or CLI tools. Lynch proposes that even a minimal MCP functioning solely as an API auth gateway would still represent a meaningful architectural win.
