Why Claude Skills Beat MCP for Production Integration Work
The Problem: MCP’s Architectural Overhead MCP (Model Context Protocol) sounds compelling on paper: a universal protocol for connecting AI models to external data sources. In practice, it introduces significant operational complexity that Claude Skills sidesteps entirely. Core Architectural Differences MCP: Client-Server Architecture MCP requires running separate server processes: { "mcpServers": { "database": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres"], "env": { "POSTGRES_CONNECTION_STRING": "postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/db" } } } } This means: Additional processes to monitor More failure points Version dependency hell Network latency for every operation Authentication complexity multiplied Skills: Direct API Integration Skills execute directly within Claude’s runtime: ...