---
title: Agents fall back from MCP to CLI?
slug: agents-fall-back-from-mcp-to-cli
published_at: 2026-02-06 16:00:42 +0000
updated_at: 2026-03-04 20:08:30 +0000
summary: 
description: 
tags: []
views: 309
author: CJ Avilla
url: https://www.cjav.dev/videos/agents-fall-back-from-mcp-to-cli
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1w2LWqltiw
youtube_id: Q1w2LWqltiw
embed_url: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q1w2LWqltiw
thumbnail_url: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q1w2LWqltiw/hqdefault.jpg
type: video
---

# Agents fall back from MCP to CLI?

*Published: February 06, 2026*
*Views: 309*

## Watch

[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1w2LWqltiw)

[![Agents fall back from MCP to CLI?](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q1w2LWqltiw/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1w2LWqltiw)

## Description



## Transcript

So, I'm curious if you're seeing this too with command line interfaces and MCP servers. I've definitely seen a bunch of MCP servers that work a few times, maybe they'll take a few steps forward and then the second they fall down, boom, it's back to the CLI. So, biggest example that I think of all the time is GitHub. I have a GitHub MCP server installed and the second it hiccups or doesn't do what the agent is expecting, the agent just drops back to the GA CLI. As we're starting to think through shipping skills and recommending ways to integrate with our APIs, I'm thinking more and more that the skill should include both sort of a top level recommendation to use the MCP server and then also include a fallback at the end that's like and by the way if none of this works just fall back to the CLI and maybe even like some examples for curl. So what do you think? Have you seen this too? Your agents are starting with MCP falling back to CLI. Do you think we should recommend the CLI at all in our skills?

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