Same capabilities, different behavior: controlled study of MCP vs CLI agent interfaces
ModalityDance · hf · 2026-10-31
Researchers from HK PolyU and CAS introduce MICA, which renders MCP and CLI interfaces from a shared semantic action contract and routes decoded actions through the same runtime, enabling matched-capability comparisons. Across six models and three environments, interface representation alone substantially changes task performance and interaction cost, extending to semantic behavior differences. Targeted repair of interface-specific realization improves performance while reducing cost — the model-capability interface is itself part of the decision process.
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