Ask HN: How to request specific tools from an MCP server?

1 Arindam1729 0 5/24/2025, 8:40:56 PM

I'm working on a MultiAgent workflow that uses multiple MCP servers. Some of these servers expose 30+ tools, but I only need 2-3 specific ones per agent.

Now the issue is, Some servers support a `--tools` flag or allow passing a list of tools explicitly, which is awesome.

But many don't, and I can't seem to find a standard way to declare just the tools I want. When I use multiple MCP servers together, it often fails or conflicts because it can't resolve or match the right tools.

My questions:

Is there a standard or recommended way (via the protocol or any convention) to select only specific tools from an MCP server?

How are you handling this in your agent or mcp client setups?

Should this be a server-side feature (like filtering tools on init), or should agents filter post-discovery?

Would love to hear how others are managing tool overload when working with such MCP servers.

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Ask HN: How to request specific tools from an MCP server?

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