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I still prefer MCP over skills

david.coffee

61–70 of 415 posts

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#61
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point was that you don’t have access to a CLI in every environment.

You could have access to a web browser or web request tool instead.

There is no world in which an enterprise is not OK with an agent having access to a CLI but is OK with possibly getting prompt injected from a random web search.

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#62
post #24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but there are still many environments where an LLM will not have access to a CLI. In those situations, skills calling CLI tools to hook into APIs are DOA.

skills can have code bundled with them, including MCP code

The agent still doesn’t have an execution environment. It can’t execute the code!

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#63
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but there are still many environments where an LLM will not have access to a CLI. In those situations, skills calling CLI tools to hook into APIs are DOA.

idk, just have a standard internet request tool that skills can describe endpoints to. like you could mock `curl` even for the same CLI feel

Now you’ve replicated MCP but with extra steps and it’s harder to debug.

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious example is a corporate chatbot (if it's using tools, probably for internal use). Non-technical users might be accessing it from a phone or locked-down corporate device, and you probably don't want to run a CLI in a sandbox somewhere for every session, so you'd like the LLM to interface with some kind of API instead. Although, I think MCP is not really appropriate for this either. (And frankly I don't think ch…

Why are they not calling APIs directly with strictly defined inputs and outputs like every other internal application? The story for MCP just makes no sense, especially in an enterprise.

MCP really only makes sense for chatbots that don’t want to have per session runtime environments. In that context, MCP makes perfect sense. It’s just an adapter between an LLM and an API. If you have access to an execution engine, then yes CLI + skills is superior.

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#66
MCP pollutes the context, if you dont care about wasting context token for all MCP tools, go ahead and use MCP, but you should know that cli tool+skill can perfectly replace it with less token overhead and better matching due to skill's front matter

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#67

MCP pollutes the context, if you dont care about wasting context token for all MCP tools, go ahead and use MCP, but you should know that cli tool+skill can perfectly replace it with less token overhead and better matching due to skill's front matter

That really depends on how your harness implements MCP client. There are implementations that don't pollute context any more than CLIs, but if one uses only CC, he would never know.

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#68
post #7

This isn't a zero-sum game or a choice of one over the other. They solve different layers of the developer experience: MCP provides a standardized, portable interface for external data/tools (the infrastructure), while Skills offer project-specific, high-level behavioral context (the orchestration). A robust workflow uses MCP to ensure tool reliability and Skills to define when and how to deploy those tools.

Completely agree. I don’t see why people view this as an either or decision.

Also worth mentioning that some paid MCP providers offer an actual value added. Sure, I can use curl or a self hosted crawler for web searches, but is it really worth the pain?

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#69

The "only skills" people are usually non-technical and the "only CLI" people are often solo builders. MCP makes a lot of sense for enterprise IMO. Defines auth and interfaces in a way that's a natural extension of APIs.

Or just rapidly spinning up something.

Codex -> LiteLLM -> VLLM

           |____> MCP
Takes a couple of minutes to setup.

Re: I still prefer MCP over skills

#70
post #52

I still use vanilla Claude Code without MCP or skills, am I in the minority? Not trying to be a luddite.

Me too just use AGENTS.md and it seems to work. I don't understand what problem MCP is trying to solve and skills just sounds like something you can do in AGENTS.md

What am I missing out on?

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