MCP Elicitation Tutorial

Learn how to build interactive MCP tools.

MCP elicitation is new in the latest version of the spec. It allows for user-input workflows like:

• Confirmation (y/n)

• Multiple choice selection

• Freeform input

I’ll show you how it works and how to build MCP servers with elicitation today using FastMCP.

Check out the video on YouTube

Timestamps
1:10 - How MCP Elicitation Works
4:20 - MCP Elicitation Demo
10:21 - MCP Elicitation with FastMCP
16:16 - Elicitation with the Model Context Protocol Inspector
21:12 - Elicitation with VS Code

Massive Course Update 🚀

I’ve added 32 videos to the AI Engineer Roadmap, over 10 hours of content.

Have a look at the first lesson video for free and consider buying the full course if you like it!

Topics from this week’s video

• MCP Client Feature: Elicitation

  • Demonstration of a new MCP client capability enabling user input mid-process

  • Tested using Claude Desktop, VS Code Insiders, and MCP Inspector

• How Elicitation Works

  • Three-step flow: server request → user prompt → response returned

  • Allows structured data input (e.g., name, email, choices)

• Implementation Example

  • Python server built with FastMCP (“Book Buy Demo”)

  • Tools: list_books and buy_book demonstrating elicitation steps

  • Shows async context.elicit() usage and response handling

• Testing & Debugging

  • Claude Desktop: no elicitation support yet

  • VS Code Insiders & MCP Inspector: successful interactive flow

  • Fixes for response handling and validation

• Practical Use & Takeaways

  • Use elicitation to confirm actions or gather info before running tools

  • Found via GPT-generated FastMCP code

  • Encouragement to explore MCP features and related Zen Codes videos

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First-principle thinking is required to break out of iterative improvements and make order of magnitude improvements.

Simon Eskildsen