stdio vs HTTP

	HTTP (Streamable HTTP)	stdio
Latency	Network roundtrip	Local pipe — <1ms
Auth	Bearer header	Env vars / process owner
Mount	URL + token	Command + args + env
Use when	Official cloud MCPs (Slack, Linear, GitHub)	Local helpers, self-hosted MCPs

HTTP example

{ "type": "http",
  "url":  "https://mcp.linear.app/sse",
  "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer lin_api_..." } }

{ "type": "stdio",
  "command": "npx",
  "args":    ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/data"],
  "env":     { "READ_ONLY": "1" } }