Five overlooked MCP features that help AI clients better understand server tools

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A developer writing for DEV Community has highlighted five underused features of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) specification that improve how AI clients interact with servers. Among them are tool annotations — such as readOnlyHint and destructiveHint — which describe a tool's behavior rather than just its function, helping clients plan execution and design confirmation flows. MCP tools can also return structured JSON data via structuredContent, making it easier for clients to validate results or pass data into workflows. Developers can further declare an outputSchema so clients know the shape of returned data in advance. The author emphasizes these are existing, documented features of the MCP spec, not new APIs, and notes that annotations are hints only and should not be used as security guarantees.

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