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Scope of `consequentialHint` for high-risk read tools

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
html
Domain
api

Research direction

Start by reading the WebMCP spec definition of consequentialHint and the linked pull request 217, then review the six comments for agreement on the scope. Decide whether to extend the hint to cover high-risk data exposure or define a separate sensitive-data hint; done means the spec clearly distinguishes the relevant consent risks and defines the chosen hint.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The current WebMCP spec defines consequentialHint (introduced in https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webmcp/pull/217) as:

"If true, indicates that executing the tool will result in consequential actions that are significant, real-world, or non-reversible, ex: booking a flight, transferring money."

This definition focuses on mutative operations (write actions) but leaves high-risk read-only operations ambiguous.

Many tools do not alter state but retrieve highly sensitive, restricted, or regulated user data. Letting an agent execute these silently without user confirmation introduces severe privacy and security risks.

Tool Example Risk Category Potential Impact
readUserAddress Location Privacy Exposes the user's physical, real-world location.
readBankAccountBalance Financial Privacy Reveals net worth, enabling targeted financial exploits.
readApiKey Security Credentials Exposes secrets that grant permanent external write access.
readMedicalHistory Regulated Data Exposes highly sensitive health records (e.g., HIPAA).

I'd be in favor of updating consequentialHint to explicitly include high-risk data exposure with something like:

*"If true, indicates that executing the tool or disclosing its results will lead to significant, real-world, non-reversible, or high-privacy-risk consequences (e.g., booking a flight, transferring money, or exposing credentials and medical records)."

OR we could also introduce a new hint (e.g., sensitiveDataHint) to keep consequentialHint strictly reserved for side-effect-producing mutations, and introduce a separate, parallel hint specifically for data access risks. This would allows agents to differentiate their consent UI (e.g., "This tool will execute an action" vs. "This tool will read sensitive information").

@johannhof

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