Tool Schema Tax

The fixed context cost paid when an agent runtime injects tool schemas into every prompt, regardless of whether those tools are used in the current turn.

Key points

• Native MCP can be token-efficient per operation, but expensive across a full session when tool schemas are always loaded ^[src-041].
• In Marco Mornati’s GitHub experiment, Native MCP had the lowest per-interaction cost at 207 tokens, but the GitHub server added about 3,062 fixed schema tokens per prompt ^[src-041].
• In a 20-prompt session with only two GitHub operations, the article estimates Native GitHub MCP at 61,654 tokens, with 61,240 tokens coming from repeated schema overhead ^[src-041].
• The same session costs 448 tokens with raw CLI, 968 with on-demand CLI plus skill, and 892 with a gateway MCP ^[src-041].
• The schema tax is most damaging for low-frequency tools that are loaded throughout long coding sessions but called only at the start or end ^[src-041].

Related concepts

• MCP vs CLI Token Trade-off
• G/N Ratio Tool Selection
• Gateway MCP Pattern
• Claude Code Token Economics
• Claude Code Context Management Discipline

Source references

• ^[src-041] Marco Mornati — “The Future of Agentic Tooling: MCP Servers vs. CLI A Data-Driven Comparison” (2026-04-27)