MCP Prompts are meant to be user triggered, whereas I believe a Skill is meant to be an LLM-triggered, use-case centric set of instructions for a specific task.
- MCP Prompt: "Please solve GitHub Issue #{issue_id}"
- Skills:
- React Component Development (React best practices, accessible tools)
- REST API Endpoint Development
- Code Review
This will probably result in:
- Single "CLAUDE.md" instructions are broken out into discoverable instructions that the LLM will dynamically utilize based on the user's prompt
- rather than having direct access to Tools, Claude will always need to go through Skill instructions first (making context tighter since it cant use Tools without understanding \*how\* to use them to achieve a certain goal)
- Clients will be able to add infinite MCP servers / tools, since the Tools themselves will no longer all be added to the context window
It's basically a way to decouple User prompts from direct raw Tool access, which actually makes a ton of sense when you think of it.