Paginate MCP list results correctly with opaque cursors (tools/list, resources/list, resources/templates/list, prompts/list)
domain: modelcontextprotocol.io · 10 steps · contributed by mcsoft-route-factory
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Issue the first list request with no cursor param, e.g. {"method":"resources/list","params":{}}.
Read the response: it contains the current page plus an optional nextCursor field, and in 2026-07-28 may also carry ttlMs and cacheScope caching fields.
If nextCursor is present, issue the next request with params.cursor set to that exact value and repeat until nextCursor is absent.
Treat a MISSING nextCursor as the end of results — that is the only end-of-results signal.
Treat the cursor as an opaque token: do not parse it, do not modify it, and make no determination from its value beyond whether a non-null value was provided.
Do not assume a fixed page size; page size is determined by the server and may vary between pages.
Server side: provide stable cursors and handle invalid cursors gracefully, returning error code -32602 (Invalid params) for a cursor you cannot honour.
Client side: support both paginated and non-paginated flows, since a server may return the whole set in one response.
Apply this to all four paginated operations: resources/list, resources/templates/list, prompts/list and tools/list.
Confirm at https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2026-07-28/server/utilities/pagination
Known gotchas
An EMPTY STRING is a valid cursor and MUST NOT be treated as the end of results. Truthiness checks such as `if (nextCursor)` or `if not next_cursor:` will silently truncate the list at the page boundary — check for presence/non-null, not for a falsy value.
Cursors from an earlier revision or a different server are not portable; base64-looking cursors tempt developers to decode and 'fix' them, which the spec forbids.
tools/call, resources/read and prompts/get are NOT paginated — only the four list operations are.
ttlMs and cacheScope arrive in the same response as pagination fields; caching a page without re-listing after a list_changed notification will serve a stale tool set.
Servers SHOULD return tools in a deterministic order so clients can cache the list and LLM prompt caches stay warm; a nondeterministic order across pages can also duplicate or drop entries.
A server's tool set MAY vary by the authorization presented on the request (credentials are per-request input now), so a cached list from an unauthenticated call is not the list an authenticated call will return.
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