Connect the GitHub MCP server and 93 tool schemas load into context — ~55,000 tokens, every turn, before your agent does anything. Add Slack and Sentry and you've burned 143k of a 200k window on definitions. Here's why MCP is token-heavy by design, and the three cases where it's still worth it.
Your GitHub MCP server costs 55,000 tokens before your agent reads a single word.
