MCPs (e.g., Playwright, WordPress, Notion) return large, token-heavy responses by default — heavy enough that a single MCP call (like scraping an Amazon PDP via Playwright) can max out a conversation's context window. Installing a Skill in front of the MCP call throttles what comes back, so the same task completes without exhausting the window.
Demonstrated with an upload-CSV Skill that auto-detected the task, asked zero clarifying questions, and executed in 150 tokens for an 8% context reduction — versus an untamed MCP response running 800+ tokens per exchange. This is presented as the unlock for MCP-heavy workflows (e.g., an Amazon PDP analysis producing a structured markdown artifact in ~10 minutes) rather than waiting for a bigger context window.
Related: Claude Skills (Saving AI Analyses as Reusable Tools), Claude's Three Automation Layers: Skills vs. Sub-Agents vs. MCP.