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Is MCP becoming the common foundation of smart, decentralised search?

15 points contextetech 2 hours ago 10 comments

troupo 1 hour ago | parent

As always, the answer to an article whose title is a yes/no question: no

hobofan 1 hour ago | parent

> Three things still have to be built, server by server

> citation

Nope, as long as the MCP server exposes enough metadata to be cited (mostly trivial), citation is a job of the client/LLM.

> trust

Also just a function of the client. The server can't aid here at all as it's inherently untrustworthy in the system.

> measurement

Maybe. Though it's debatable how much measurement _each_ server needs, and whether that actually gives meaningful insight to optimize. This might as well be measured outside of the servers, in the client/a centralized logging system that also sees surrounding context.

randomblock1 1 hour ago | parent

No, because HTTP already is. You can't have every MCP added. Every harness has a search tool, so just fetch data as needed. MCP isn't for search, it's for interacting. Sometimes that's search but mostly not.

aerzen 52 minutes ago | parent

Pi doesn't have a search tool. I think of web search as an interaction with a search engine. So it makes perfect sense to use MCP.

(although i don't, i have a CLI)

brap 45 minutes ago | parent

For web services, what is the point of MCP or even a skill when modern agents can just find API docs on their own and use it?

I think in this day and age agents no longer need official 3P integrations, they can just use whatever API is already available (and in some cases even the UI).

dingaling911 34 minutes ago | parent

Figuring out the quirks of each api is a waste in tokens but I agree once you decide on a specific integration it makes sense to use an api.

Still, mcp means you don’t need to figure out the quirks.

Net, I think mcp is extremely good for resource constrained circumstances. I add mcp servers to many of my own applications and it’s an automatic productivity boost.

As a bonus, when I want to automate the integration I literally make my automations use mcp.

usernametaken29 42 minutes ago | parent

No

gjvc 41 minutes ago | parent

no

porori 39 minutes ago | parent

Decentralised search sounds weird to me. Searching always needs a centralised collection.

prophesi 2 minutes ago | parent

This is just an ad for contextetech. Search engines build their own index, which is hard. Decentralized search engines like Searx have middling results, and it's a project running for over a decade. "Smart" is subjective, and not something I'd trust an LLM to determine.