Ask HN: Is manually discovering and configuring MCP servers the only way?

1 point

bingwu1995

10 months ago

After reading this paper on autonomous tool invocation (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.01056), I'm wondering if others share my frustration with the current MCP (Model Context Protocol) workflow. My typical process for adding a new capability to my agent:

1) Search for MCP servers that might have the functionality I need 2) Read through documentation to verify it actually does what I want 3) Install the MCP server and manually add it to my agent's tool list

This feels incredibly time-consuming and not "agentic".

Am I missing something? For those building with MCP:

- How do you discover relevant MCP servers for your use cases? - Is there a tool/platform that aggregates MCP servers with searchable capabilities? - Has anyone automated the process of going from "I need X functionality" to "agent can now do X"?

Feels like there should be a better way where agents could discover and configure tools themselves based on capability requirements.

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