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Claude Skills are awesome, maybe a bigger deal than MCP (simonwillison.net)

738 points by weinzierl · 281 days ago · 370 comments on HN

Article summary

Anthropic has introduced Claude Skills, a new feature that allows users to create and share skills, which are folders containing instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude can load when needed to improve its performance on specific tasks. Skills are conceptually simple, consisting of a Markdown file with optional scripts and documents, and can be easily shared and used with other models. The author believes that Skills have the potential to be a bigger deal than Model Context Protocol (MCP) due to their simplicity and flexibility. Skills can be used to automate tasks, such as data journalism, and can be easily iterated upon to improve their performance.

Main themes

  • Claude Skills
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • LLM tooling
  • Automation
  • Data journalism
  • Coding agents

What commenters say

  • The introduction of Claude Skills may render MCP obsolete for some use cases due to its simplicity and flexibility.
  • Some users are skeptical about the value of Skills, seeing it as just a repackaged version of existing concepts like RAG or MCP.
  • Skills are not a replacement for MCP, as they serve different purposes and have different use cases, with MCP providing access to APIs and Skills providing context for specific tasks.
  • The use of Skills may lead to a more efficient and organized way of working with LLMs, but it may also introduce new challenges, such as information fragmentation and context management.
  • The simplicity of Skills is both an advantage and a disadvantage, as it makes it easy to create and share skills, but may also limit its functionality compared to more complex systems like MCP.
  • The concept of Skills is closely related to RAG, but it is not the same thing, and can be used to achieve similar goals in a more flexible and efficient way.
  • The use of Skills may require a different approach to context management, with some users preferring to manually select and clear context, while others rely on the model to manage it automatically.