what honestly is the difference between an mcp and a skill + instructions + curl.
Really it seems to me the difference is that an mcp could be more token-efficient, but it isn't, because you dump every mcp's instructions all the time into your context.
Of course then again skills frequently doesn't get triggered.
just seems like coding agent bugs/choices and protocol design?
The difference is that the server gives a description of the api it understands in enough detail that the llm can make use of it.
MCP is still going to be handy enough for iot type devices, where an llm can discover what's actually supported by that device without needing to query about the specific version.
Swagger / OpenAPI just aren't detailed enough to use without other documentation.
Skills & instructions will always have the limit that they run locally, so if they don't match the server there is a problem.
The maps are pretty, but the per-tile build constraints of the WFC build approach means that pretty unnatural generations end up happening because non-local influence is difficult to take into account. I think this may be OK for games where you discover tiles one at a time, but for a full map generator it's not great, and better solutions exist. Red Blob Games did a writeup of a noise-based method which looks superior imo. You can use moisture-tracking approaches for rivers, lay roads, bridges and other artificial elements in a separate pass, and it will likely end up faster and more robust. I think WFC is an interesting programming problem, though, so it was likely fun to implement.
Nonetheless, this was an excellent write-up and impressive demo.