Treat an MCP Tool List as an Access Review

A connector can expose more operations than the task needs. A tool that reads a customer record may sit beside another that updates or deletes one.

Before using an MCP server with Claude Code, inspect the actual tools it exposes and the account permissions behind them. For a first exercise, choose a synthetic read-only question with a result you already know. Confirm which tool was called and which information it returned.

Do not infer safety from a friendly connector name or a read-only sentence in the prompt. The server and its credentials determine available access; the agent still has to select an appropriate action. Document the smallest useful access set and keep any consequential write behind the workflow's real approval boundary.

Claude Code documentation.