At first, I thought MCPs were the “proper” way to extend Claude Code. And to be fair, they do make sense in some cases. At the same time, I’ve also realized there’s a lot you can get done with plain CLI tools you’ve probably heard of but never really used. A lot of my workflow does not need huge stack of tools. That made me realized there’s a lot more you can do with plain CLI tools you’ve probably heard of and just never used. Sometimes it feels like we’ve overengineered developer workflows to a point where it just stops making sense. Not taking shots at any specific tool, including OpenClaw , but still. And for some workflows where MCPs actually help, the experience still feels bad. There’s often no clean authentication flow, which is strange for something that’s such a core part of the setup. Claude is just really, really good at terminal workflows. It understands shell commands well, can chain tools together nicely, and in a lot of cases it gets the job done faster than going through an MCP stack. A few that have been especially good for me: gh for GitHub workflows without leaving the terminal rg because searching big repos fast is half the battle tmux for keeping Claude, editor, server, and git stuff all alive in one place lazygit for reviewing and staging Claude’s changes without pain composio recently for MCP without the usual auth pain. Handles authentication with OAuth which has been the best and a plug-and-play workflow for me. fzf for moving around files and scripts quickly btop for keeping an eye on what is eating my machine ffmpeg because Claude can generate the command and save me from memorizing that syntax again One thing I’ve noticed is that CLIs feel more “native” for Claude Code. They’re less abstraction, and most importantly, easier to debug. I’ve been putting together a longer list here with install + auth notes if that’s useful: https://github.com/ComposioHQ/awesome-agent-clis Anything else I’ve missed that you use mostly with CC? submitted by /u/shricodev
Originally posted by u/shricodev on r/ClaudeCode