Agent scaffolding outweighs MCP-versus-CLI choice in one task
Across one six-operation repository task, seven agent scaffoldings and five models produced paired MCP-to-CLI cost ratios from 0.43x to 29x; scaffolding dominated and agents often ignored their assigned interface.
Why it matters: Model and interface labels alone cannot predict agent cost or reliability when the surrounding harness changes prompts, tool exposure, recovery, context, and actual execution behavior.