Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that acts as the gateway for agentic tools to access information from the outside world — third-party services, internal APIs, databases, and more. MCP servers have tools registered to them, and agents can call those tools through the MCP server. The MCP server executes the tool and returns the result to the agent. The agent finds the right tool to call based on the tool descriptions.
Agent ←→ MCP Server ←→ External Service (Jira, Slack, Sentry…)
How agents discover tools
When an agent starts, it connects to any configured MCP servers. Each server responds with a list of available tools along with their descriptions. The agent reads those descriptions and knows what capabilities are available for the current session.
You don't need to tell the agent which tool to use — it figures that out from the descriptions and your prompt.
Example
With a Jira MCP and Sentry MCP configured, and the sentry-to-pr skill installed:
You: "the crash GOOD-DOCTOR-ANDROID-6YW is blocking the release, fix it"
Agent: [calls Sentry MCP → fetches crash details]
[calls Jira MCP → creates a linked ticket]
[writes the code fix]
[opens a PR with ticket reference]
None of those API calls required you to write any code or leave your terminal.
Configuring MCP servers
Each agentic tool has its own configuration format. Refer to the official documentation of each tool for details:
The Skola Marketplace MCPs
The marketplace includes pre-configured MCP entries for common internal services. Installing via Skola handles all the configuration automatically:
skola install mcp/sentry-mcp
skola install mcp/jira-mcp
During install, you'll be prompted for the required environment variables (API tokens, base URLs). Skola writes these to your local config — no manual JSON editing needed.
Token consumption and MCP
Some agentic tools support enabling or disabling certain MCP servers. You can disable servers that won't be used by the agent to reduce token consumption. For example, if you are sure the agent will not connect to the database today, you can disable the database MCP server.
Every active MCP server sends its tool descriptions at startup, and those descriptions count towards your initial token usage. Keeping only relevant servers active is one of the easiest ways to reduce cost per session.
See Token Consumption for more details.
Next steps
To publish an MCP to the Skola marketplace so teammates can install it with a single command, see Sharing Your MCP.
