User Elicitation
Why Elicitation Matters
You might wonder why elicitation exists at all. Why not just make the client smarter, or the LLM better at guessing, so that the tool always has what it needs upfront? There are several reasons why elicitation is a valuable feature of the MCP ecosystem.
The first is disambiguation.
The tool cannot know in advance whether the user's query will match one result or twenty. Listing every possible disambiguation option as a tool parameter would be absurd — the options depend entirely on the data the tool finds at runtime.
The second is confirmation of destructive actions.
A tool that deletes database records or sends an email should probably ask are you sure? before proceeding. That confirmation is not something you can collect upfront, because the user needs to see what the tool is about to do before they can confirm it.
The third is progressive data collection
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