Skill

I wrote quite a few AI articles last year. The most basic workflow back then was: first, organize an outline or a list of questions myself; let the large model spit out the main body text; then copy the content into a local md document, add frontmatter, tags, categories, and titles, and finally publish it. This process isn’t unusable, but it’s tedious. The part that really wastes time isn’t the main body text, but the repetitive labor surrounding it. Especially after using Codex a lot recently, this awkwardness has become even stronger. It can read repositories, modify files, supplement materials, and even write articles directly into the directory. If I still have to copy and paste things manually, it feels like I’m tying down the tool’s legs.

These past few days, while reading about AI programming, people were first discussing MCP, and then immediately started talking about Skill. Many people who see this term for the first time will instinctively treat it as another new protocol or another advanced prompt.

My judgment is very straightforward: Skill isn’t here to replace MCP; rather, it’s more like providing an occupational manual for the agent. MCP solves the problem of “enabling the agent to connect to the external world,” while Skill solves the problem of “how to reliably get the job done after connecting.” These two are not a replacement relationship; they are more like one following the other.

Simply put, MCP gives the agent hands and feet, and Skill tells the agent not to mess around.