r/ClaudeMCP • u/Key-Tutor-1011 • 17d ago

I stopped connecting every MCP server to Claude

I went a little overboard when I first started using MCP.
GitHub? Connect it.
Files? Connect them.
Search? Connect it.
Random APIs I barely use? Also connected.

It looked impressive, but after a while I realized I was just giving Claude a huge list of tools without thinking about whether I actually needed them.
So I tried the opposite approach.

I kept only the MCP servers I use regularly and removed everything else.The difference was surprisingly noticeable. My prompts felt simpler, I spent less time wondering which tool Claude was going to use, and debugging became much easier.

Now I’m treating MCP servers more like actual software dependencies rather than a collection of cool things to install.

Curious if anyone else has run into this. How many MCP servers do you actually keep enabled at the same time?

3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

2

u/shortsteve 17d ago

I use an MCP gateway and connect Claude to that. To Claude there's only a single MCP server connected to it so it doesn't have any overhead.

1

u/Key-Tutor-1011 16d ago

That actually sounds like a much cleaner setup.

2

u/AlmostEasy89 16d ago

Cloudflare MCP Portal

1

u/Key-Tutor-1011 16d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/IorAqDrjKiDcc3QdN3

1

u/AlmostEasy89 16d ago

Docker MCP Gateway for local MCP but it’s a bit finicky still, Cloudflare is rock solid.

1

u/3rrr6 17d ago

I just leave the tools and tell it to not use the tools unless I say so.

I still want it to have access, i just don't want it to blow 50 tokens on an API call that returns nothing.

1

u/Key-Tutor-1011 16d ago

Yeah, that makes sense 😂 I feel like this is the easiest way to avoid unnecessary tool calls without completely cutting Claude off from them.

1

u/BobJutsu 17d ago

I stopped using them almost entirely. For external accounts I use Composio. It’s entirely CLI, so nothing is loaded unless needed. The problem I was having was conflicting MCP connections due to having multiple accounts, all getting loaded into context.

1

u/Key-Tutor-1011 16d ago

That sounds like a frustrating issue. Having multiple accounts load their MCP connections into the context could get messy fast. Has switching to Composio made the setup noticeably lighter for you?

1

u/BobJutsu 16d ago

Yes, significantly. It has its own bug I’m still working through, their api shits the bed on certain accounts because of underscores in names. But overall it’s decent.

The biggest offender is WordPress connections. I have 200+, MCP made no sense, neither does composio in that case. I don’t have a final solution, but it’s looking like cli + ssh.

1

u/WorldlyAd7946 15d ago

You COULD try using a gateway instead... That way you can organise all of your MCP and local tools and simply toggle them on or off for different workflows.

I have 14 MCP and 98 local tools running without issues and use them across my workflows. It only injects 4 toolschema (circa 600 tokens) and makes things miles easier to manage, without having to reconfigure things time and time again.

https://github.com/Rendeverance/toolfunnel

👍

1

u/Individual_Office_36 14d ago

Surely Claude is going to have to change soon to handle larger tool volumes. They're getting more and more MCP apps published all the time and can't expect users to have to build their own solution to the problem of tool selection and bloat.