How Elicitation in MCP Brings Human-in-the-Loop to AI Tools

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has transformed how AI systems connect to external services. Yet, until recently, those interactions remained rigid and brittle. Tools would either succeed when all parameters were supplied before execution, or they would fail with vague errors. That one-shot model led to frustrating user experiences and limited the sophistication of AI workflows.

Elicitation enables an MCP server to pause and request structured input from the user at runtime, thereby transforming static tool invocation into an interactive…