Subagents, skills, commands and MCP servers: the right tool for each need
Claude Code can be extended in several ways, and picking the wrong one adds noise, cost or risk without meeting the need. This lesson helps you pick the fitting mechanism for every need, install in your repository the extensions that actually help and connect an external tool without granting it more rights than it needs.
Lesson objective
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to choose between CLAUDE.md, skill or command, subagent, MCP server and hook for a given need, create a review subagent and a reusable command in your repository, and connect an MCP server with limited scope and rights.
Topics covered
- Claude Code subagents
- Claude Skills
- MCP server
- custom commands
- coding agent extensions
In the glossary
Where it fits
Plan, then delegate with method
How do I run a real task without the agent heading the wrong way, and which tool do I give it for what?
Lessons in this module
- Explore, plan, code, commit on existing code
- Subagents, skills, commands and MCP servers: the right tool for each need (this lesson)
What you will learn in this module
This lesson is part of the course Work with Claude Code on a real project: context, planning, review
- Run a task on existing code as explore, plan, code, commit, with plan mode, verification criteria and Git rather than checkpoints alone.
- Choose and justify the right mechanism for a need (CLAUDE.md, skill or command, subagent, MCP server, hook) and set it up in the repository.
Related courses
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