UK AI Security Institute: First Empirical Study of 177,436 MCP Agent Tools — Software Dev Is 66% of All Tools, Action Tools Grew from 27% to 65%

arXiv·high signal

Merlin Stein (UK AISI / Oxford) analyzed 177,436 agent tools across all public MCP server repositories from November 2024 to February 2026 — the largest empirical study of real-world agent tool usage to date. Software development accounts for two-thirds of all tools and 90% of MCP server downloads. Action tools (file editing, financial transactions, drone control) surged from 27% to 65% of total usage over 16 months, demonstrating a shift from read-only to world-modifying agent capabilities.