Track current news by fetching TimesLIVE top stories and section headlines as structured JSON for news monitoring.
Get TimesLIVE top stories. Returns current TimesLIVE stories, including section-specific headlines. Article access can vary by story.
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Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.
v1.17.9Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
No annotations are provided, so the description carries the full behavioral burden. It offers only the vague hedge 'Article access can vary by story,' which hints at paywalls/restricted content without saying so, and says nothing about result count, pagination, freshness, or ordering.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
The description is short but partly redundant: sentence two largely restates sentence one, and 'Article access can vary by story' is a hedge that does not clearly earn its place without explaining the restriction.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a zero-param, no-annotation, no-output-schema news tool the description is minimally adequate — an agent knows it fetches TimesLIVE stories — but it omits how many stories return, whether the feed is live, and how it differs from the three sibling tools.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
The tool takes zero parameters, so per the rubric the baseline is 4. There is nothing for the description to disambiguate, though it also does not explain what the parameterless call returns beyond 'stories'.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
The first sentence names a verb and resource (get TimesLIVE top stories), but the second sentence muddies it by adding 'section-specific headlines' while a dedicated timeslive_sections sibling exists, and no distinction is drawn from timeslive_headlines. An agent cannot reliably tell whether this returns the front-page top stories or per-section headline sets.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
There is no statement of when to use this tool versus timeslive_headlines, timeslive_sections, or timeslive_article. Given three closely named siblings in the same family, the absence of routing guidance is a real gap.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.