What is an MCP Prompts?

Rather than every host reinventing common prompt patterns for a given domain, a server can ship a library of vetted templates — a code-review checklist, a bug-report format, a meeting-summary structure — as first-class MCP prompts. Each one is declared with a name, description, and a set of arguments the caller fills in, and the server renders the final prompt text (potentially pulling in live resources) when it's invoked. This differs from tools and resources in intent: tools perform actions and resources expose data, while prompts exist specifically to standardize and improve the quality of what gets sent to the model. A host application can list a server's available prompts in a command palette or slash-menu, letting users trigger domain-specific, well-tested prompting patterns instead of writing free-form instructions from scratch each time. Because prompts are versioned and owned by the server rather than hardcoded into the client, an organization can update or A/B test a shared prompt template centrally and have every connected host pick up the improvement automatically.