[lnbharath]

I definitely relate with your sentiment and I like your term "configuration bankruptcy"

on MCP, the mental model that clicked for me is "giving claude access to tools it can call" so that instead of copy pasting from your database or API, claude can just... query it

playwright MCP for me is godsend

[tanmay001]

Nice way to put it. Skills feel great for shaping how Claude works inside a repo, while MCP really shines when you want it to talk to “live” systems : databases, test runs, CI, all that external state.

[Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0]

I thought skills were supposed to help with “giving claude access to tools it can call”. When would one use MCP over skills?

[lnbharath]

skills are basically markdown files that teach claude how to do something. they live in your repo and load on demand.

MCP is for when you need claude to actually interact with external systems like querying a database, hitting an API, etc...