mcp-bridge-tools-snapshot-at-connect

IN premise

The tool catalog and server instructions are populated once during `connect()` and never refreshed — there is no mechanism to pick up tools added after the initial handshake.

Summary

When an MCP client connects to a server, it grabs the list of available tools exactly once and then stops looking. If the server later adds new tools or updates its instructions, the client will never see those changes until it disconnects and reconnects. This means any dynamic tool registration that happens after startup is effectively invisible to already-connected clients.

Dependents

These beliefs depend on this one:

ask-mcp-achieves-accurate-bounded-tool-use — MCP tool integration in ask() achieves both bounded safety (iteration caps, error tolerance, transport timeouts at two layers) and accurate tool discovery (catalog reflects current server capabilities rather than a stale snapshot).
ask-mcp-tool-use-has-current-catalog — Ask's MCP tool integration achieves full reliability — errors caught, iterations bounded — with the tool catalog always reflecting the MCP server's current capabilities rather than a stale connection-time snapshot.

Details

Source

entries/2026/05/11/reasons_lib-mcp_client.md