Why are MCP Prompts strictly user-controlled, and can they be LLM-invoked like Tools?

[Danil-Didkovskiy]

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Discussion Topic

I noticed that in the spec, prompts are explicitly described as user-controlled, intended for explicit selection by the user via the client UI. What were the main reasons for making prompts user-controlled instead of allowing the model to invoke them like tools?

[tadasant]

The fact that Prompts are user-controlled is the primary differentiator between Prompts and Tools. If they were model-controlled, then Prompts and Tools become basically the same thing.

Is there a use case you have in mind where you need the model to have access to Prompts? Whatever it is, can you just present those capabilities as Tools instead?

[Danil-Didkovskiy]

Yes, eventually, I decided to use Tools for my task. Thanks for your reply.