Your MCP Server Is Eating Your Context Window. There's a Simpler Way

TL;DR: MCP tool definitions can burn 55,000+ tokens before an agent processes a single user message. We built the Apideck CLI as an AI-agent interface instead:an ~80-token agent prompt replaces tens of thousands of tokens of schema, with progressive disclosure via --help and structural safety baked into the binary. Any agent that can run shell commands can use it. No protocol support required. The problem nobody talks about at demo scale Here's a scenario that'll feel familiar if you've wired up MCP servers for anything beyond a demo. You connect GitHub, Slack, and Sentry. Three services, maybe 40 tools total. Before your agent has read a single user message, 55,000 tokens of tool definitions are sitting in the context window. That's over a quarter of Claude's 200k limit. Gone. It gets worse. Each MCP tool costs 550–1,400 tokens for its name, description, JSON schema, field descriptions, enums, and system instructions. Connect a real API surface, say a SaaS platform with 50+ endpoints,