MCPs and Skills

MCPs and skills solve two different problems:

• MCPs give the agent tools or external-system access
• skills give the agent sharper instructions for a specific provider or workflow

Good first MCPs

• Figma for design context and design-to-code work
• Playwright for browser QA and clicking real flows

Good first skills

• Clerk for authentication work
• Convex for app data and product-access work
• Stripe for checkout and webhook work
• any repo-local docs, QA, or workflow skills the project already maintains

When to use them

• use a provider skill when the problem is provider-specific
• use Playwright when the answer depends on what actually happens in the browser
• use Figma when the design file is the source of truth
• do not invoke everything at once just because it exists

Practical rule

The more specific the tool or skill, the more specific your prompt should be. Ask for one concrete outcome, not a vague “handle this whole app.”

What success looks like

You are using MCPs and skills well when the agent has the minimum extra capability needed to solve the current problem cleanly.