ITWorx_MCP_Hub-Public/docs/02-security/OUTPUT_SAFETY.md

Output Safety

MCP results may be consumed by agents and therefore are an untrusted content channel.

Required result envelope

Every tool result should provide structured data and metadata:

{
  "data": {},
  "meta": {
    "project": "...",
    "environment": "...",
    "source": "...",
    "truncated": false,
    "nextCursor": null,
    "generatedAt": "..."
  },
  "warnings": []
}

Rules

• mark truncation explicitly;
• never silently omit authorization failures;
• distinguish target unavailability from empty results;
• normalize control characters in logs;
• return plain text only when the contract requires it;
• cap nested depth and collection size;
• do not render untrusted HTML in the UI;
• resource descriptions and tool metadata come from managed manifests, not target content;
• include source identifiers so an agent can verify where information came from.