[aschuth]

The skill/CLI argument misses what MCP enables for interactive workflows. Sure, Claude can shell out to psql. But MCP lets you build approval gates, audit logs, and multi-step transactions that pause for human input.

Claude Code's --permission-prompt-tool flag is a good example. You point it at an MCP server, and every permission request goes through that server instead of a local prompt. The server can do whatever: post to Slack, require 2FA, log to an audit trail. Instead of "allow all DB writes" or "deny all," the agent requests approval for each mutation with context about what it's trying to do.

MCP is overkill for "read a file" but valuable when you need the agent to ask permission, report progress, or hand off to another system mid-task.