[samdjstephens]

It seems to me that MCP and Skills are solving 2 different problems and provide solutions that compliment each other quite nicely.

MCP is about integration of external systems and services. Skills are about context management - providing context on demand.

As Simon mentions, one issue with MCP is token use. Skills seem like a straightforward way to manage that problem: just put the MCP tools list inside a skill where they use no tokens until required.

[simonw]

You could even have a Skill that says "First call 'enable-mcp jira' to enable the Jira MCP, now here's how to use that: ..."

[rane]

I tried. Claude Code can't enable a disabled MCP on the fly.