There’s a lot of noise right now making it seem like you have to pick a side between MCP and Agent Skills . It’s being framed like a high-stakes rivalry, but that’s a total misunderstanding of the tech. Skills and MCP is fundamentally different things. Skills are just a prompt loaded on demand , while MCP is Client-Server communication protocol . To give you an analogy: MCP is the Infrastructure : It’s the universal adapter that connects agents to the world. Skills are the Playbooks : It’s the packaged intelligence that tells an agent how to behave. Table of contents Integration: The N×M vs The Trigger Architecture: Service vs Filesystem Invocation: Structured Schemas vs Flexible Scripts Runtime: Isolated Containers vs Shared Environments Where It Fits: High-Frequency vs Lightweight The Bottom Line: Scaling Systems vs Scaling Brains Frequently Asked Questions 1. Integration: The N×M vs The Trigger The first dimension is about how the agent connects to its world.…