Designing CLIs for Agents, Not Humans — Pedro Lopez, Airbyte

Airbyte built both an MCP server and a CLI so agents can use its data.

Here's what each one is actually good for. Pedro Lopez, software engineer at Airbyte, shares lessons from building two ways for AI agents to reach company data through Airbyte's Context Store, a search-optimized index of tools like Zendesk, Stripe and HubSpot. Both are thin interfaces over one platform, built from OpenAPI specs. For the MCP server, he explains why to keep the tool count small and use progressive discovery, why OAuth is the only realistic way to sign in, why users expect long-lived sessions, and why URL elicitation isn't ready across clients yet. For the CLI, he explains designing for agents instead of humans: JSON in and JSON out, consistent noun-verb commands, skills that ship with the tool, and no interactive prompts. He closes with when to choose MCP and when to choose a CLI.

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