Best Practices

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Guidelines and recommendations for building reliable, safe, and effective integrations with Outreach MCP.

Do

• Let the agent discover schemas at runtime via tools/list; don't hardcode field lists
• Honor MCP annotation hints — confirm on destructiveHint: true, auto-approve readOnlyHint: true
• Chain tools to compose workflows; don't reach for REST when MCP can handle it
• Add user confirmation before destructive operations (delete, sequence removal)
• Log every tool call for audit
• Use external_id searches to bridge to your CRM or system of record

Don't

• Hardcode tool inputs; schemas change between releases
• Call write tools in tight loops; batch where possible (sequence_add_prospects accepts multiple IDs)
• Assume a tool exists across all orgs; some are org-config dependent (e.g., custom fields)
• Build polling loops on batch tools; check state once and use webhooks for long-running ops
• Bypass annotation-driven confirmation flows for "convenience" — that's how destructive bugs ship

Getting Started Checklist

1. ✅ Confirm your agent runtime supports MCP 2025-03-26 or later
2. ✅ Get the Outreach MCP server URL (prod or staging)
3. ✅ Let your client perform DCR + OAuth on first connection
4. ✅ Connect — tools auto-discover via tools/list
5. ✅ Test with a read tool (current_user or account_search)
6. ✅ Build prompts that describe intent, not tool calls
7. ✅ Honor destructiveHint: true with confirmation gates
8. ✅ Log everything