Will the MCP server slow down my storefront?

No, if you architect it correctly. The MCP server runs as a sidecar container on a separate process; it consumes its own RAM and CPU budget. The only shared resource is Magento itself, the GraphQL endpoint, REST API, and DB. Two patterns keep storefront latency unaffected: (1) Aggressive caching. 5-second app-level memoisation + 15-min Redis + 24-hour Varnish for stable data (products, categories, CMS). (2) Circuit breakers. If Magento is degraded, the MCP server opens its circuit and returns stale-cache responses to the LLM instead of hammering an already-struggling app server. In our load tests, an MCP server pushing 50 req/s sat at < 4% additional Magento PHP-FPM load.