7.1The Fundamental Difference

MCP connects Claude to external capabilities (tools, data, APIs). Skills teach Claude how to use those capabilities for specific domains.

If MCP provides the "kitchen and ingredients," Skills provide the "recipes."

They are not competing alternatives — they are complementary layers. But for browser automation specifically, choosing one over the other (or using both) has significant implications. And as of July 2026, this is no longer a theoretical debate: Microsoft — the vendor of the most popular browser MCP server in the world — recommends the Playwright CLI over Playwright MCP for coding agents, citing roughly 4x fewer tokens per task (~27k vs ~114k).