MCP Elicitation
Explore MCP elicitation and understand how it allows AI agents to pause tasks and request structured information from users during workflows. Learn about its two modes—form and URL—to handle various data types securely, including sensitive credentials, and follow best practices for robust, interactive AI agent development.
Imagine a developer building a travel booking tool as part of an MCP AI project. The user sends a single message: “Book me a flight to London.” The tool fires immediately. But two pieces of information are missing: the departure date and the preferred seat type. Without a way to pause and ask, the MCP workflow has two bad options: fail with an error, or make assumptions and book the wrong flight.
This is the problem MCP elicitation solves. Rather than failing or guessing, the server pauses execution, asks the user for exactly what it needs, and picks up right where it left off once the user responds. The workflow continues without restarting, without losing context, and without surprises.
What is MCP elicitation?
MCP elicitation is a client-side primitive that allows an MCP server to pause execution mid-task and request structured information from the user through the client. It was introduced in MCP spec version 2025-06-18 as a first-class feature for building interactive, human-in-the-loop MCP integration workflows.
To understand where elicitation fits in MCP architecture, consider the direction of communication. MCP server tools are server-exposed capabilities that the client calls. The client reaches out to the server to get work done. Elicitation runs in the opposite direction: it is a client-exposed capability that the server calls. The server reaches out to the client to gather what it needs before continuing.
The flow is always fixed: the server initiates the request, the client presents it to the ...