Agent Skills and MCP
Agent Skills and MCP solve different problems. Skills are reusable packages of instructions and supporting resources that an agent can load when relevant. MCP is a protocol for connecting a host to external capabilities and context.
Skills can teach an agent how to build MCP
The official MCP documentation provides Agent Skills that guide coding agents through server scaffolding and MCP App creation. The skill carries best practices; the MCP server carries runtime capabilities.
Skills are not currently the same thing as MCP tools
A skill does not automatically become a remotely callable tool. Likewise, a tool schema does not teach an agent an entire development workflow.
Good combination
Use a Skill to teach a developer agent how your organization builds and operates an MCP integration; use the MCP server to expose the production capabilities the resulting application calls.