Client capability matrix

Client capability matrix

The MCP specification covers five capabilities that affect what discord-mcp can do once connected: tools, resources, resources/subscribe, sampling, and elicitation. Not every client implements all five. This page is the operator’s quick-reference for what works where, as of the Plan 10 cut (2026-Q2).

Note

The server advertises every capability it supports at the MCP initialize handshake. Clients that don’t see a capability in the server’s response simply don’t expose it — there’s no runtime error. Likewise, the server can detect missing client-side capabilities (sampling especially) and degrade gracefully to a fallback.

The matrix

Capability	Claude Desktop	Claude Code	Cursor	Generic stdio	Notes
tools	yes	yes	yes	yes	Universal — every MCP client supports tool calls.
resources (read)	yes	yes	yes	varies	List + read URIs. Cursor exposes them in the MCP panel; Claude products surface them inline.
resources/subscribe	yes	yes	no	varies	Push notifications via notifications/resources/updated. Cursor lacks this as of 2026-Q2; fall back to REST polling. See gateway-subscribe recipe.
sampling	yes	yes	yes (since 0.42)	varies	Lets the server call back into the client’s LLM. Required by the 5 intelligence tools. See Architecture → Sampling.
elicitation	yes	yes	no	rare	Mid-tool human-in-the-loop confirmation. discord-mcp uses it for destructive ops; falls back to the __confirm contract when absent.

Per-client notes

Claude Desktop

• Min version: 0.7.5 (sampling shipped late 2025).
• Known limitations: stdio only; no HTTP transport. Server config lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows).
• Best for: developer workstations, single-tenant operator UI. Supports all five capabilities.
• Setup: Get started → Client setup.

Claude Code

• Min version: any 1.x (MCP support is part of the core CLI).
• Known limitations: same stdio-only constraint as Desktop. The CLI manages MCP servers via claude mcp add and stores config in the user’s home directory.
• Best for: agent-driven workflows, scripted/CI use, operators who prefer terminal over GUI. Supports all five capabilities.
• Setup: Get started → Client setup.

Cursor

• Min version: 0.42 for stable sampling support; resource subscriptions remain unsupported as of the Plan 10 cut.
• Known limitations: no resources/subscribe and no elicitation — destructive tools fall back to the __confirm:true contract (see Architecture → Confirmation).
• Best for: in-editor agent workflows where Discord is one of several MCP servers in scope. Tools and resources both render in the MCP panel.
• Setup: Get started → Client setup.

Generic stdio (custom clients)

• Min version: any client implementing MCP spec ≥ 2025-03-26.
• Known limitations: capability set depends entirely on the client implementation. The server gracefully advertises only what’s relevant; a minimum-viable client that only handles tools will see 192 tool entries and no resources.
• Best for: bespoke agent harnesses, integration tests, or wrapping discord-mcp inside a higher-level orchestrator.
• Setup: configure the client to spawn npx discord-mcp with the required env vars (DISCORD_TOKEN, MCP_DRY_RUN, etc.). See Get started → Installation.

Gateway-mode caveat

--gateway adds resources/subscribe semantics to five URIs (see gateway-subscribe recipe). The matrix above shows which clients can take advantage of those subscriptions. Clients in the “no” column will still see the resources but cannot subscribe to push updates — they’d have to re-read on a timer to get fresh state.

What the server advertises

discord-mcp announces capabilities at initialize based on:

• --gateway flag → enables resources/subscribe.
• MCP_SCOPES env → restricts tools list to the scoped subset.
• OTEL_ENABLED → does NOT affect capabilities; observability is server-side only.

Clients then negotiate their side. If both server and client advertise a capability, it’s enabled for the session; if either side lacks it, the feature is invisible.

Related

• Get started → Client setup — concrete config snippets per client.
• gateway-subscribe recipe — the workflow that exercises subscriptions.
• intelligence-summarize recipe — the workflow that exercises sampling.
• Architecture → Confirmation — fallback when a client lacks elicitation.