One read of Model Context Protocolmcp-20261013T193707Z

community/interest-groups/primitive-grouping Page removed · 129 lines, page removed

# Primitive Grouping Charter ## Group Type ## Mission Statement ## Scope ### In Scope ### Out of Scope ### Related Groups ## Problem Statement ## Goals ## Organization Strategies ## IG Principles ## Leadership ## Membership ## Operations ## Discussion Topics ## Lifecycle ### Graduation Criteria (IG → WG) ### Retirement Criteria ## Success Criteria ## Resources ## Changelog

The page is gone upstream. What it last said is kept here.

community/working-groups/progressive-disclosure New page · 129 lines, new page

# Progressive Disclosure Charter ## Group Type ## Mission Statement ## Scope ### In Scope ### Out of Scope ### Related Groups ## Problem Statement ## Goals ## Organization Strategies ## WG Principles ## Leadership ## Authority & Decision Rights ## Operations ## Discussion Topics ## Lifecycle ### Retirement Criteria ## Deliverables & Success Metrics ### Success Criteria ## Resources ## Changelog

A whole new page. There's nothing to diff it against, so here is what it says.

# Progressive Disclosure Charter

> Charter for the MCP Progressive Disclosure Working Group.

## Group Type

**Working Group**

## Mission Statement

The Progressive Disclosure Working Group explores how MCP Primitives (Tools, Resources, Prompts, Tasks) might be organized, beyond the flat lists maintained by the protocol, and how such organization might benefit both MCP servers and clients. The group documents diverse requirements from clients, servers, and gateways, supports reference extensions of varied organization strategies, and feeds recommendations into the [SEP process](/community/sep-guidelines) rather than picking a single canonical pattern early.

## Scope

### In Scope

* **Requirements gathering**: documenting use cases and constraints
* **Pattern exploration**: testing and evaluating various approaches
* **Proof of concepts**: maintaining a shared repository of reference implementations and experimental findings

### Out of Scope

* **Approving spec changes**: this WG does not have authority to approve protocol changes; recommendations flow through the SEP process
* **Implementation mandates**: the group can document patterns but cannot require specific client or server behavior

### Related Groups

* **[Tool Annotations IG](/community/interest-groups/tool-annotations)** - annotation-based filtering and selection of primitives intersects with how primitives are organized and surfaced
* **[Skills Over MCP WG](/community/working-groups/skills-over-mcp)** - maintains the published [Skills extension](/extensions/skills/overview); skill discovery and progressive disclosure overlap with grouping

## Problem Statement

Flat lists of MCP primitives can be long and cumbersome to work with for several reasons. Many such problems are within the scope of this group, but some are not.

**Within Scope**

* **Context overload** - when loaded into the context of an LLM, a primitive list can overwhelm the model and lead to confusion and poor selection
* **Inefficient operations** - long lists in the context consume many tokens, which increases processing cost and response latency
* **Poor developer experience** - the lack of organizational tools for primitives makes them harder to manage and maintain

**Beyond Scope**

* **Organization for security** - organizing and disclosing primitives to clients based on their privilege level is an important problem but beyond this group's mandate
* **Organizing MCP servers** - server discovery and registry schema decisions belong to the [Registry WG](/community/working-groups/registry), with skill-distribution requirements contributed by the Skills Over MCP WG

## Goals

1. **Documenting requirements and experiences** - document diverse requirements for the different clients, servers, and gateways that implement these extensions. We will **not** try to find consensus early on, but aim to document the trade-offs based on feedback from real-world experience.
2. **Reference extensions** - many possible organization mechanisms are emerging, and it may be too early to select one canonical pattern. Different servers are implementing similar features, but the lack of standardization limits clients' ability to leverage them effectively. This group will support reference extensions of varied organization strategies, e.g., grouping, tool-search, code-mode.
3. **Evangelizing standards** - invite feedback from developers and maintainers of large MCP servers and clients to migrate away from bespoke implementations toward standardized extensions.

## Organization Strategies

See [Approaches](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/progressive-disclosure-wg/blob/main/docs/approaches.md) for detailed descriptions of each strategy, including prior art, examples, and discussion links.

## WG Principles

1. **Document discussions** - the WG aims to document the trade-offs and discussions rather than dictate one specific implementation. Prefer GitHub Discussions on the WG repository over prolonged Discord threads. Meeting notes from synchronous WG calls are also uploaded to GitHub Discussions for future reference.
2. **Experimental extensions** - the repository houses experimental extensions for different approaches. Extensions SHOULD support at least Python and TypeScript implementations and include (1) end-to-end working demonstrations and (2) detailed instructions for how others can integrate with them.
3. **Feedback from deployments** - the WG solicits deployment experiences and feedback from users of extensions to prioritize feature development and changes.

## Leadership

| Role | Name | Organization | GitHub | Term |
| - | - | - | - | - |
| Facilitator | Tapan Chugh | University of Washington | [@chughtapan](https://github.com/chughtapan) | Initial |
| Facilitator | Sam Morrow | GitHub | [@SamMorrowDrums](https://github.com/SamMorrowDrums) | Initial |
| Maintainer | Cliff Hall | Futurescale | [@cliffhall](https://github.com/cliffhall) | Initial |
| Core Maintainer | Kurtis Van Gent | Google | [@kurtisvg](https://github.com/kurtisvg) | Initial |

## Authority & Decision Rights

| Decision Type | Authority Level |
| - | - |
| Meeting logistics & scheduling | WG Leads (autonomous) |
| Proposal prioritization within WG | WG Leads (autonomous) |
| SEP triage & closure (in scope) | WG Leads (autonomous, with documented rationale) |
| Technical design within scope | WG consensus |
| Spec changes (additive) | WG consensus → Core Maintainer approval |
| Spec changes (breaking/fundamental) | WG consensus → Core Maintainer approval + wider review |
| Scope expansion | Core Maintainer approval required |
| WG Member approval | WG Member sponsors |

## Operations

| Meeting | Frequency | Duration | Purpose |
| - | - | - | - |
| Discussion | Weekly | TBD | Requirements alignment, approach review, experimental findings |

Meetings are published at [meet.modelcontextprotocol.io](https://meet.modelcontextprotocol.io/tag/progressive-disclosure-wg). Open to anyone. Join the [#progressive-disclosure-wg](https://discord.com/channels/1358869848138059966/1425903819186770064) channel on the [MCP Contributors Discord](/community/communication#discord).

## Discussion Topics

The following items form the WG's current work agenda. This list is not exhaustive and will evolve as the group identifies new areas of interest.

| Item | Status | Champion | Notes |
| - | - | - | - |
| Requirements alignment | In Progress | All facilitators | Review approaches, identify common requirements and gaps |
| Experimental findings repo section | Proposed | TBD | Dedicated repo section for implementations and evaluation results |
| MCP Grouping Convention v0.1 | Proposed | TBD | Documented pattern (not spec) for grouping of primitives |

## Lifecycle

**Current Status: Active Exploration**

### Retirement Criteria

* Problem space resolved (conventions established, absorbed into other WGs)
* Insufficient participation to maintain momentum
* Community consensus that grouping doesn't belong in MCP protocol scope

## Deliverables & Success Metrics

### Success Criteria

* **Short-term**: documented consensus on requirements and evaluation of existing approaches
* **Medium-term**: clear recommendation (convention vs. protocol extension vs. both)
* **Long-term**: interoperable grouping convention across MCP servers and clients

## Resources

* [Working group repo](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/progressive-disclosure-wg) - incubation space for the Progressive Disclosure Working Group

## Changelog

| Date | Change |
| - | - |
| 2026-09-21 | Renamed from Primitive Grouping to Progressive Disclosure and converted from Interest Group to Working Group ([meeting notes](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/discussions/3375)) |
| 2026-06-18 | Initial charter |