I Still Prefer MCP Over Skills

Why I believe the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a better architectural pattern than the emerging “Skills” trend for LLM tool integration.

David Mohl

I could not agree any less with the author. I don’t want APIs, I want agents to use the same CLI tooling I already use that is locally available. If my agents are using CLI tooling anyways there is no need to add an extra layer via MCP.

I don’t want remote MCP calls, I don’t even want remote models but that’s cost prohibitive.

If I need to call an API, a skill with existing CLI tooling is more than capable.

I often just put direct curl commands in a skill, the agent uses that, and it works perfectly for custom API integrations. Agents are perfectly capable of doing these types of things, and it means the LLM just uses a flexible set of tools to achieve almost anything.

I think this is the best of both worlds. Design a sane API (that is easy to consume for both humans and agents), then teach the agents to use it with a skill.

But I agree with the author on custom CLI tooling. I don’t want to install another opaque binary on my machine just to call some API endpoints.