Why do people have to make this stuff so complicated? An API that requires a key and enabling an MCP server and configuring your client to fetch markdown files on the fly? Why not just a tar with all the docs? How big are they? A couple MB? Agents are really good at using grep on text files. So is my text editor.

I haven't yet figured out the point of this MCP stuff. Codex seems to have innate knowledge of how to curl jira and confluence and gitlab and prometheus and SQL databases and more. All you need to configure is a .netrc file and put the hostname in AGENTS.md. Are MCP tools even composable? Like can the model pipe the response to grep or jq or another MCP call without it entering/wasting context? Or is a normal CRUD API strictly more powerful and easier to use?

AWS has theirs as well: https://awslabs.github.io/mcp/servers/aws-documentation-mcp-...

As it turns out these are very helpful for obscure features and settings buried in the documentation.

This must be what gwern meant when he said to write for AI.