MCP vs CLI vs Skills: What Each Costs in Context

The article measures input-token costs for giving an agent GitHub access via the GitHub MCP server, the gh CLI, or a gh skill across Claude Haiku 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6 Luna, and Gemini 3.8 Flash; on Sonnet 5.5 the CLI used 1,421 tokens, the skill 3,315, and the MCP server 59,417 with its 46 default tools. It reports that the GitHub MCP server's 46 default tools add 19,436 tokens to every request on Sonnet 5.5, and that a single tool result (GitHub's release object) cost about 20,400 tokens. It also describes the beta Tool Search server tool, which cut the up-front cost of 46 tools to under 600 tokens and halved whole-task cost on Sonnet 5.5 while raising it on Haiku 5.5.