Mahesh Murag

Don't Build Agents, Build Skills Instead – Barry Zhang & Mahesh Murag, Anthropic

Dec 8, 2025 · 16:22

Barry Zhang and Mahesh Murag of Anthropic argue that instead of building domain-specific agents, developers should build reusable Skills—organized folders of files that package procedural knowledge for agents. They explain that skills are progressively disclosed to protect the context window, use scripts as self-documenting tools, and have already grown to thousands in five weeks, including foundational, partner, and enterprise skills. Skills complement MCP servers by providing expertise while MCP handles connectivity. The future includes treating skills like software with testing and versioning, and enabling agents to create their own skills for continuous learning, ultimately creating a collective knowledge base that makes agents more capable and reliable.

Building Agents with Model Context Protocol - Full Workshop with Mahesh Murag of Anthropic

Mar 1, 2025 · 1:44:12

Mahesh Murag of Anthropic presents the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard that replaces fragmented integrations with a single protocol for connecting AI systems to data sources, enabling context-rich AI applications and agentic experiences. He explains MCP's philosophy, inspired by APIs and LSP, and its three interfaces: tools (model-controlled), resources (application-controlled), and prompts (user-controlled). Murag highlights adoption with over 1,100 community-built servers and official integrations from companies like Cloudflare and Stripe. He demonstrates building agents with MCP using the MCP-Agent framework, showing how agents can use tools dynamically and composably across hierarchical systems. Future plans include remote server support with OAuth 2.0, a centralized registry for discovery and verification, and enabling agents to self-evolve by dynamically finding new capabilities via registry search.