Here is the failure I care about. GitHub is connected. The tools are listed. You ask for open pull requests. The agent apologizes and says it cannot access GitHub.
That is not always a bad token. Sometimes the tools were never in the request.
What people measured
In March 2025, a Cursor forum thread described an effective cap: across every MCP server, the agent was given the first 40 tools. Slack tools at the end of the list vanished until GitHub was turned off. The limit was on the list presented to the model, not on how many times a tool could be called.
That matches how tool calling works. Each tool is a schema in the prompt. Schemas are tokens. Tokens are the thing you already pay for.
Later, people said the cap moved. A March 2026 thread has a user running more than 80 tools with no warning, and a claim that older Cursor versions warned around 50. Reddit also circulated a "40 to 80" bump. Cursor's own MCP docs, the ones that tell you where mcp.json lives, do not mention 40 or 80.
So I will not pretend 40 is a law. I will pretend that stuffing twenty servers into one chat is still how you hide the one you wanted.
GitHub's MCP is hungry. Pair it with Figma (one report listed 12 tools on that server alone) and Playwright, and you have already spent a grocery budget before Linear gets a seat.
Why "ten servers" is not ten tools
This directory has ten servers on purpose. That is not ten tools.
GitHub exposes issues, pull requests, search, checks, and whatever else they shipped this quarter. Figma's remote server is a pile of read and write tools: get_design_context, get_screenshot, get_variable_defs, get_metadata, plus write tools if you grant them. Playwright is a browser API. One vendor "server" is a surface area.
Enable all ten and you are not being thorough. You are holding a bake sale in the system prompt.
What I do instead
Paste what you need into mcp.json. Then treat Tools & MCP like a mixer board.
Working on a Figma frame: Figma on, Playwright on if you will check the page, Context7 on if you will write React. GitHub can stay on. Linear, Stripe, Sentry, Firecrawl off.
Working a Sentry issue: Sentry and GitHub on. Figma off. You do not need variables from a file you are not implementing.
New chat after you toggle. Old conversations keep old tool lists in their heads.
If you want a default, keep Context7 and GitHub connected and let the rest sleep. That pair covers "what does this library do" and "what does this PR say." It is the stack in miniature.
How you know you blew the budget
The new server is green. The agent never calls it, even when you name the tool. You disable two other servers, start a fresh agent, and suddenly GitHub works again.
That was the 2025 forum story. If your build is more generous, you still pay in worse tool choice. Models get sloppy when forty functions all look like "search."
Cursor can also ask for approval per tool, and enterprise allowlists can hide tools on purpose. Check those before you blame a cap.
The fix is not a bigger number. The fix is a smaller board.