MCPs Aren't for Everything: Social Media Tasks from MCP to Direct SDK Integration

Direct SDK Integration in VSCode with AI Agent Outperformed Claude + Bluesky MCP

MCP (model context protocol) is great, but not for every task.

I added a Bluesky MCP to Claude to help me review the accounts I've been following. Seeing it in action is amazing at first, but quickly I ran into issues where the model does not finish the job, or simply fails to execute on specific asks.

Since I had built a social media (bluesky) AI assistant before, I know that this could work much better with a hybrid approach inside an IDE. So I moved the task to Visual Studio Code + CLINE. I started a new project, added the Bluesky SDK to the folder, and used the chat interface (and the same model - Claude 3.7 Sonnet) to complete the tasks.

The difference is, instead of asking the agent to use the MCP itself, I asked it to write code using the SDK directly.

Because the execution is entirely done in code, it removes the uncertainty and any errors that pops up can be properly addressed. Also, since the code is saved onto the project, they can be picked up and reused with confidence.

And it is no more complex than using Claude directly. I am still chatting with the model directly. (note I do have memory bank set up for CLINE)

With agents, the IDE is quickly becoming my everything-app, not just my coding environment.