Talk
Improving MCP tool schemas to increase agent reliability
In 2026, we are seeing ever more uses of agents that mash together functionality from myriad MCP servers. When an agent uses an MCP server, it must decide which tool to call, which arguments to supply, and how to interpret the results. Since agents can only look at the tool schema and not the server code itself, schema quality directly determines whether a tool call succeeds and whether the agent can successfully use the returned data.
About
Pamela Fox is a human that loves to learn, teach, and create. She is currently a Python Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, where she helps developers use Python with Azure, Foundry, VS Code, and GitHub. Previously, she was an early developer advocate at Google, a full-stack developer at Coursera, and the CS content creator at Khan Academy. She also taught CS at UC Berkeley and for multiple non-profits around the bay area.