token-efficiency
2 articles
Simon Willison: CLI Tools Beat MCP — Less Tokens, Zero Dependencies, LLMs Already Know How
Simon Willison argues CLI tools beat MCP for coding agents in most cases: lower token cost, no extra dependencies, and native --help affordances. Anthropic's code-execution-with-MCP proposal admits the token-waste problem too.
The LLM Context Tax: 13 Ways to Stop Burning Money on Wasted Tokens
The 'Context Tax' in AI brings triple penalties: cost, latency, & reduced intelligence. Nicolas Bustamante's 13 Fintool techniques cut agent token bills by up to 90%. A real-money guide for optimizing AI context, covering KV cache, append-only context, & 200K token pricing.