Comment by wild_egg
2 days ago
CLIs don't use context space when unused. I find them almost universally preferable just because of that.
Models get stupid after the first 80-100k tokens are used so keeping bloated tools out of the window unless completely necessary is a pretty hard requirement for effective AI use IMO.
Well you need to use context space somehow, to tell Claude that the LSP CLI exists and how to use it.
It takes a dozen tokens to put "when you need to do X, run `foo --help` and use it" in your CLAUDE.md.
Plenty of MCPs and plugins and whatnot out there idly consuming 5-25k tokens 24/7. How is that the same?
Because you can enable/disable MCPs and plugins just like you can choose not to include that context in CLAUDE.md .
I do it all the time. I have several MCPs configured but only enable them on demand.