shutup-mcp: Because Your Agent Doesn't Need 167 Tools
Here is a problem nobody talks about enough. You connect five MCP servers to your AI agent. Suddenly it sees 167 tools. Most of them are irrelevant to the current task. The model burns tokens reading tool descriptions, picks the wrong one, and you wonder why accuracy tanked.
shutup-mcp is a zero-config MCP proxy that sits between your agent and all your MCP servers. It intercepts the tool list and only surfaces the ones relevant to the current task. No regex filters. No manual allowlists. No API keys. Everything runs locally.
The approach is dead simple. Instead of showing all 167 tools and hoping the model figures out which 3 it needs, shutup-mcp uses intent matching to hide the other 164. Token usage drops. Accuracy improves. The creator reports measurable improvements on both metrics just by reducing the tool surface.
This is v0.1.0, a 200-line Python proxy that proves the pattern works. A Rust rewrite and hybrid BM25 plus embedding search are on the roadmap. You swap your existing MCP server entries in claude_desktop_config.json with shutup as a proxy and you are done.
The MCP ecosystem has a context pollution problem. Every new MCP server you add makes every other tool slightly worse. shutup-mcp is the first tool specifically built to fix this.
https://github.com/nicobailon/shutup-mcp
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shutup-mcp is a zero-config MCP proxy that sits between your agent and all your MCP servers. It intercepts the tool list and only surfaces the ones relevant to the current task. No regex filters. No manual allowlists. No API keys. Everything runs locally.
The approach is dead simple. Instead of showing all 167 tools and hoping the model figures out which 3 it needs, shutup-mcp uses intent matching to hide the other 164. Token usage drops. Accuracy improves. The creator reports measurable improvements on both metrics just by reducing the tool surface.
This is v0.1.0, a 200-line Python proxy that proves the pattern works. A Rust rewrite and hybrid BM25 plus embedding search are on the roadmap. You swap your existing MCP server entries in claude_desktop_config.json with shutup as a proxy and you are done.
The MCP ecosystem has a context pollution problem. Every new MCP server you add makes every other tool slightly worse. shutup-mcp is the first tool specifically built to fix this.
https://github.com/nicobailon/shutup-mcp
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