MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Skills are two distinct but complementary concepts for building AI agents. MCP solves the tool connectivity problem by providing a shared communication standard — write an integration once and any MCP-compatible agent can use it. Skills address the usage problem: a portable bundle of procedural knowledge (e.g., a SKILL.md file) that tells an agent how to use tools for specific tasks. Together, MCP handles the wiring layer while Skills provide the knowledge layer, forming a complete capability stack for production AI agents. The post also references an 8-part MCP course covering architecture, JSON-RPC, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, and PydanticAI integrations.
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