Thanks David! I’d appreciate being part of the Beta for the MCP. Thanks.
Hi Tanner,
I’m using “deterministic” here to really mean “can be run without AI.” Not “must” or “only,” but realistically I should be able to take any app in any state and push a working version into production without writing a single prompt.
The merge conflict issue was one case where I was essentially blocked from deploying without prompting. Within that issue, I don’t really know how the model is deciding which version on either side of the conflict to accept. For a change in logic that doesn’t necessarily show up in the UI, it would be impossible to tell how the agent chose to resolve. Prior to that, I had another issue where I had made changes to the app via prompt, but the agent never committed the changes and I was blocked from publishing because no changes were detected. I had to re-prompt the agent to make another change (any change) for the commit to go through and for publishing to be re-enabled. In both cases, having direct access to the underlying VCS tools would have allowed me to resolve the issues and deploy a working app.
Working within a branch, I might want to commit some changes and not others, or roll them back, and I might want to cherry pick some commits into a new branch (or any git action because building/maintaining software is rarely as linear as the current experience implies).
For a lot of these operations, AI can often get in the way more than it helps which justifies the need for a zero-AI approach alone. The non-negotiable issue is that software always breaks at some point, and unless Retool is willing to accept the responsibility 
then that means I am accountable for those times and therefore I need to be able to drive on my own.
I love how flexible the new experience is, and think the AI-based approach can 100% be a first-class experience, but at most it can only be a way to make the process faster - it can’t be the process. I have to be able to create an end-to-end working application with my own two hands.
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@JaredStufft thank you so much for signing up for the CLI private beta. I have enabled CLI access for your Retool subdomain and shared the enablement details via email. Look forward to your feedback on the CLI.
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Hey @JaredStufft et al!
I wanted to share an exciting update related to App building credit and token consumption.
We’ve improved the agent harness so that the agent is up to 2x more efficient in some scenarios, with efficiency gains across the board. Expect faster execution and lower tokens consumed per task.
Happy building!