Clarifying Agent Concepts: Differences Between MCP, Skill, and Tool Call
yangyi · x · 2026-07-30
The article provides a clear hierarchical breakdown of five core concepts often confused in AI Agent development: Tool Call, MCP, Skill, Connector, and CLI.
- Tool Call: The foundational action export for the model to interact with the outside world.
- MCP: An open protocol making tools 'discoverable', solving the N×M integration problem.
- Skill: An instruction script encapsulating a complete task workflow.
- Connector: The adapter bridging external services into the system.
- CLI: The specific command-line execution method.
The author emphasizes that these five exist at different architectural levels and are mostly used in combination. Understanding this hierarchy resolves frequent engineering questions like 'Must Skills go through MCP?'.
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