AWS: MCP servers should guide agents on next steps

AWS's James Ward, who sits on the Agentic AI Foundation technical committee, argues MCP servers should return guidance alongside data, telling an agent what it just did and what to try next. He also proposes passing a session ID and user goal in every tool call to trace agent journeys.

• Ward: an MCP server should be a "third voice" in the conversation, not just an API
• Tool responses should say what the agent did and what to do next
• Session ID and user-goal parameters let teams stitch calls into one journey
• AWS opened its MCP Server in May and added Lambda diagnostics in September