Agent skills vs Model Context Protocol - [How] do you choose?

Anthropic introduced Agent Skills in October 2025, just a year after they introduced Model Context Protocol (MCP). Today, both Agent Skills and MCP are open standards. The fact that a single company produced two standards that seem to be competing has fueled heated debate on social media, Hacker News, and developer blogs. Some claim that MCP is dead, while others argue that the comparison itself is moot. The truth is more nuanced than that. You can build powerful agents with either or both. For…