I sort of agree with this about cognitive load. I'm somewhat new (started dipping my toes around July) but use Claude code heavily now. I did spend a lot of time playing with configuring it at first and creating agents etc. But I have a weird setup where I have three computers that I work on and at one point I realized vanilla Claude Code had adopted the things I was doing as defaults (and improved on them). So I have sort of declared a configuration bankruptcy and just use the recommended things. The only things I still do are things that help both Claude and I keep track of things (md files describing decisions and context of files).
[I still haven't figured out MCP or how/why to use them or why to bother. You run servers. I guess. It's too complex for my smol brain to understand]
It's more like you want Claude to interact with X, and you go to see if there's an MCP server for it.
Claude could use the API directly but most MCP now comes with OAuth so you can let it act as you, in case API keys are hard to come by or chargeable. Sometimes with a good skill or a preconfigured CLI tool skills can be just as good if not far more powerful than an MCP server.
But the trigger you'd look for to decide to use an MCP is 'i wish Claude could access X'. My top examples:
- pulling designs from figma to implement them - fetching ticket context for a job from JIRA - getting a stack trace to investigate from Sentry
I have a Pixel 6 Pro. That's not thaat old.