Elicitation

Runs when an MCP server requests user input mid-task. By default, Claude Code shows an interactive dialog for the user to respond. Hooks can intercept this request and respond programmatically, skipping the dialog entirely.

The matcher field matches against the MCP server name.

Elicitation input

In addition to the common input fields, Elicitation hooks receive mcp_server_name, message, and optional mode, url, elicitation_id, and requested_schema fields.

For form-mode elicitation, the most common case:

{
  "session_id": "abc123",
  "transcript_path": "/Users/.../.claude/projects/.../00893aaf-19fa-41d2-8238-13269b9b3ca0.jsonl",
  "cwd": "/Users/...",
  "hook_event_name": "Elicitation",
  "mcp_server_name": "my-mcp-server",
  "message": "Please provide your credentials",
  "mode": "form",
  "requested_schema": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "username": { "type": "string", "title": "Username" }
    }
  }
}

For URL-mode elicitation, used for browser-based authentication:

{
  "session_id": "abc123",
  "transcript_path": "/Users/.../.claude/projects/.../00893aaf-19fa-41d2-8238-13269b9b3ca0.jsonl",
  "cwd": "/Users/...",
  "hook_event_name": "Elicitation",
  "mcp_server_name": "my-mcp-server",
  "message": "Please authenticate",
  "mode": "url",
  "url": "https://auth.example.com/login"
}

Elicitation output

To respond programmatically without showing the dialog, return a JSON object with hookSpecificOutput:

{
  "hookSpecificOutput": {
    "hookEventName": "Elicitation",
    "action": "accept",
    "content": {
      "username": "alice"
    }
  }
}

Field	Values	Description
action	accept, decline, cancel	Whether to accept, decline, or cancel the request
content	object	Form field values to submit. Only used when action is accept

Exit code 2 denies the elicitation. Claude Code doesn't show your stderr message anywhere.

Claude Code acts on hookSpecificOutput from an Elicitation hook's JSON output and discards systemMessage and continue.