servers VS wcgw

Most agents don't speak raw HTTP — they speak MCP. So the real distribution surface is a tiny MCP server that exposes each endpoint as a tool and does the paying under the hood. The agent calls web_search(query); the server hits the paid endpoint, handles the 402 with its operator's wallet, returns JSON. One line to install:

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI hosts (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, and others) to external context and actions through a structured protocol instead of ad-hoc plugins.

Model Context Protocol specification

That changed when I built mpesa-mcp — a Model Context Protocol server that wraps the Daraja API and makes it directly available to Claude, GPT-4, and Gemini.

If you haven't run into it yet, MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for exposing tools to AI agents. two-go ships an MCP server that runs over stdio with no dependencies, no URL, no account, and no API key. It's all local.

MCP server surface. The CLI is already agent-friendly, so I'm double minded about whether a Model Context Protocol server would make integration smoother. I'm personally not a fan of MCP and prefer skills and CLIs.

As noted in the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Introduction, this protocol allows Claude to interact with systems like GitHub and local databases through a standardized interface.

Keep the project's living context: current task state, decisions, conventions, known footguns as plain Markdown committed to the repo, and expose it to the agent over MCP.

The MCP ecosystem doubles every few months. Bookmark the official MCP servers repository for the canonical list.

Awesome! I essentially started with the same premise when coding "wcgw" [1]. Give a single shell tool to chatgpt (later claude).

Chronology that followed:

1. Some processes take long time: add status checking.

2. Need to kill long running process or interact with tools add option to send control characters; BashInteraction tool.

3. File editing using sed and echo is not reliable, add FileEdit tool.

4. Large output; add truncation based on tokens.

5. But wait I need command output to get truncated at the beginning but file reading `cat $file` to truncate at the end. Add special ReadFile tool.

6. File writing using 'echo "content" >file' needs unncessary quotes escaping leading to degraded quality, add special WriteFile tool.

7. Reading one file at a time is slow, change ReadFile to ReadFiles tool.

8. Directly writing files is not as good as first planning things. Prevent writing using architect mode.

And so on.

[1] https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw

Good work.

I wonder if there's really a need for separate write to terminal and read output functions? I was hoping that write command itself would execute and return the output of the command, saving back and forth latency.

> and it's not always clear when the job is done

I've authored a similar mcp [1] (but without terminal ui)

The way I solved it is by setting a special PS1 prompt. So as soon as I get that prompt I know the task is done. I wonder if a similar thing can be done in your mcp?

[1] https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw

You can basically get the same experience as aider with an MCP server like https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw. It's not perfect - sometimes has trouble with exact syntax of find/replace. But it's free to use up to your regular Claude subscription usage limit. I actually use it more than Cursor, because it's easier to flip back and forth between architecting/editing.

For building mcp server? The official docs do a great job

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction

My own mcp server could be an inspiration on Mac. It's based on pexpect to enable repl session and has some tricks to prevent bad commands.

https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw

However, I recommend creating one with your own customised prompts and tools for maximum benefit.

Personally I'm using the Filesystem server along with the mcp server called wcgw[0] that provides a FileEdit action. I use MacWhisper[1] to dictate. I use `tree` to give Claude a map of the directory I'm interested in editing. I usually opt to run terminal commands myself for better control though wcgw does that too. I keep the repo open in a Cursor/Windsurf window for other edits I need.

But other than that I basically just tell the model what I want to do and it does it, lol. I like the Claude Desktop App interface better than trying to do things in Cursor/Windsurf directly, I like the ability to organize prompts/conversations in terms of projects and easily include context. I also honestly just have a funny feeling that the Claude web app often performs better than the API responses I get from the IDEs.

[0] https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw

[1] https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

It's great! I quickly reorganised my custom gpt repo to build a shell agent using MCP.

https://github.com/rusiaaman/wcgw/blob/main/src/wcgw/client/...

Already getting value out of it.