--- schema: 1 type: video title: 'Combine Skills and MCP to Close the Context Gap — Pedro Rodrigues, Supabase' description: >- Agents working with Postgres will confidently create a view over a table with row-level security enabled and silently bypass that security in the process. Not because they can't reason. Because they don't know about the security_invoker flag, and nobody told them. Pedro Rodrigues from Supabase ran this exact test: same agent, same task, MCP alone versus MCP plus a skill. The one without the skill shipped a query that exposed data it shouldn't have. The talk covers what Supabase learned building their agent skill from scratch: critical security rules go directly in skill.md because agents will reliably skip reference files, skills should point to living documentation rather than duplicate it, and opinionated workflow guidance matters more than comprehensive coverage. Their evals ran across Claude and GPT models in three conditions and the result was unanimous. Skills without MCP underperform. MCP without skills misses environment-specific constraints. Together they close the gap that makes agents unreliable on real production systems. Speaker info: - https://x.com/rodriguespn23 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-neves-rodrigues/ - https://github.com/Rodriguespn --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/JT3OzDKrucU-combine-skills-and-mcp-to-close-the-context-gap Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/combine-skills-and-mcp-to-close-the-context-gap-ped-b7686e02a54e markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/combine-skills-and-mcp-to-close-the-context-gap-ped-b7686e02a54e.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T14:11:09.683Z' language: null children: [] videoId: JT3OzDKrucU durationSeconds: 1107 publishedAt: '2026-05-15T15:00:07.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 14 endSeconds: 118 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=14' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 118 endSeconds: 130 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=118' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 130 endSeconds: 215 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=130' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 130 endSeconds: 215 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=130' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 226 endSeconds: 314 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=226' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 226 endSeconds: 314 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=226' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 325 endSeconds: 407 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=325' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 407 endSeconds: 420 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=407' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 420 endSeconds: 506 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=420' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 506 endSeconds: 516 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=506' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 516 endSeconds: 606 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=516' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 616 endSeconds: 717 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=616' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 616 endSeconds: 717 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=616' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 717 endSeconds: 727 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=717' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 727 endSeconds: 818 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=727' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 818 endSeconds: 829 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=818' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 829 endSeconds: 952 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=829' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 963 endSeconds: 1107 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/JT3OzDKrucU?t=963' heldReason: rights --- # Combine Skills and MCP to Close the Context Gap — Pedro Rodrigues, Supabase Agents working with Postgres will confidently create a view over a table with row-level security enabled and silently bypass that security in the process. Not because they can't reason. Because they don't know about the security_invoker flag, and nobody told them. Pedro Rodrigues from Supabase ran this exact test: same agent, same task, MCP alone versus MCP plus a skill. The one without the skill shipped a query that exposed data it shouldn't have. The talk covers what Supabase learned building their agent skill from scratch: critical security rules go directly in skill.md because agents will reliably skip reference files, skills should point to living documentation rather than duplicate it, and opinionated workflow guidance matters more than comprehensive coverage. Their evals ran across Claude and GPT models in three conditions and the result was unanimous. Skills without MCP underperform. MCP without skills misses environment-specific constraints. Together they close the gap that makes agents unreliable on real production systems. Speaker info: - https://x.com/rodriguespn23 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-neves-rodrigues/ - https://github.com/Rodriguespn --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/JT3OzDKrucU-combine-skills-and-mcp-to-close-the-context-gap Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/combine-skills-and-mcp-to-close-the-context-gap-ped-b7686e02a54e · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks --- #### Chunk 0: Document excerpt (0:14 to 1:58) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 1: Document excerpt (1:58 to 3:35) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 2: Document excerpt (3:35 to 5:14) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 3: Document excerpt (5:14 to 6:47) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 4: Document excerpt (6:47 to 8:26) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 5: Document excerpt (8:26 to 10:06) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 6: Document excerpt (10:06 to 11:57) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 7: Document excerpt (11:57 to 13:38) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 8: Document excerpt (13:38 to 13:49) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 9: Document excerpt (13:49 to 15:52) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 10: Document excerpt (15:52 to 16:03) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text. --- #### Chunk 11: Document excerpt (16:03 to 18:27) > Held: transcript rights do not permit this chunk's text.