Developer builds CLI tool that cuts MCP token overhead from 47,000 to 8,100 per session

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A developer working daily with MCP servers and Claude Code measured that tool discovery and repeated tool calls consumed over 47,000 tokens per session due to verbose JSON formatting. To address this, they built mcptoon, a CLI client that outputs TOON (Token-Optimized Object Notation), a compact alternative to JSON that strips redundant structural syntax. In benchmark tests across 96 tools and 20 tool calls, mcptoon reduced token usage by roughly 83%, bringing overhead down to around 8,100 tokens. The tool is available via pip, requires no external dependencies, and is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux running Python 3.10 or later. Testing confirmed that Claude, GPT-4, and Gemini can all correctly parse TOON-formatted output.

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