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antireztoday at 8:03 AM1 replyview on HN

Don't focus on what you prefer: it does not matter. Focus on what tool the LLM requires to do its work in the best way. MCP adds friction, imagine doing yourself the work using the average MCP server. However, skills alone are not sufficient if you want, for instance, creating the ability for LLMs to instrument a complicated system. Work in two steps:

1. Ask the LLM to build a tool, under your guide and specification, in order do a specific task. For instance, if you are working with embedded systems, build some monitoring interface that allows, with a simple CLI, to do the debugging of the app as it is working, breakpoints, to spawn the emulator, to restart the program from scratch in a second by re-uploading the live image and resetting the microcontroller. This is just an example, I bet you got what I mean.

2. Then write a skill file where the usage of the tool at "1" is explained.

Of course, for simple tasks, you don't need the first step at all. For instance it does not make sense to have an MCP to use git. The agent knows how to use git: git is comfortable for you, to use manually. It is, likewise, good for the LLM. Similarly if you always estimante the price of running something with AWS, instead of an MCP with services discovery and pricing that needs to be queried in JSON (would you ever use something like that?) write a simple .md file (using the LLM itself) with the prices of the things you use most commonly. This is what you would love to have. And, this is what the LLM wants. For complicated problems, instead, build the dream tool you would build for yourself, then document it in a .md file.


Replies

tomaytotomatotoday at 8:43 AM

Although the author is coming from a place of security and configuration being painful with Skills, I think the future will be a mix of MCP, Agents and Skills. Maybe even a more granular defined unit below a skill - a command...

These commands would be well defined and standardised, maybe with a hashed value that could be used to ensure re-usability (think Docker layers).

Then I just have a skill called:

- github-review-slim:latest - github-review-security:8.0.2

MCPs will still be relevant for those tricky monolithic services or weird business processes that aren't logged or recorded on metrics.