Prompts from Prompt Builder

Prompt templates created in Salesforce Prompt Builder can be exposed as MCP prompts — a primitive in the Model Context Protocol that lets clients surface reusable, parameterized prompt templates to users. When a user selects an MCP prompt in a compatible client, the client retrieves the template, fills in any Salesforce record data, and presents the resolved prompt ready to send.

Client compatibility: MCP prompt support varies across clients. Claude and Cursor support MCP prompts, but ChatGPT does not. Check your client's MCP documentation before building workflows that depend on this capability.

You configure Prompt Builder templates as MCP prompts through the custom server Setup UI — select Prompt Builder as the backing type, choose a published Flex template, and publish. See Custom MCP Servers for the full configuration walkthrough.

In a compatible MCP client, the prompt appears as a selectable template — typically surfaced through a slash command, a prompt picker, or a similar UI affordance depending on the client. When a user selects it, the client retrieves the template from Salesforce, merges any required record data using the authenticated user's access, and presents the resolved text.

Unlike MCP tools (which agents invoke programmatically), MCP prompts are user-initiated. They're a way to put governed, data-enriched prompt templates directly in front of users at the moment they need them.

Think of an MCP prompt as a recipe. Individual MCP tools are ingredients — useful on their own, but without instructions for how to combine them. A prompt template can specify a precise sequence: call this tool first, pass its output as input to the next tool, interpret the combined result this way. This is especially valuable when tools are granular primitives that don't carry enough business context on their own. Rather than hoping the client figures out the right sequence, the prompt template encodes that knowledge explicitly — written once by someone who understands the business process, reused every time the template is invoked.

Use Prompt Builder MCP prompts when:

  • Your org has established templates for common tasks (call summaries, email drafts, case response starters, meeting prep) that users should be able to invoke quickly from their AI client.
  • Consistency matters — a sales team that wants all customer emails to follow a specific structure benefits from a template that enforces that structure, even when drafting from an external client.
  • Compliance or legal review has approved specific prompt formulations for regulated use cases. Exposing these as MCP prompts ensures users start from approved language regardless of which client they're using.
  • You want to pull live Salesforce data into a prompt — for example, a meeting prep prompt that automatically includes the contact's recent activity, open cases, and account health score.

  • Call summary: A rep finishes a call and selects the "Summarize Call" prompt in Claude. The template pulls the Opportunity record and recent activity history from Salesforce, merging them into a structured prompt the rep sends to get a formatted summary.

  • Meeting prep brief: Before a customer meeting, a rep invokes a meeting prep prompt that pulls account health, open opportunities, and last interaction date — producing a briefing in seconds without leaving their AI client.

  • Compliance-approved outreach: In a regulated industry, all AI-assisted outbound communication must start from legal-reviewed templates. Publishing these as MCP prompts ensures users across the organization start from the approved language.

  • Only Flex templates are supported. Other Prompt Builder template types (Sales Emails, Field Generation, etc.) cannot be exposed as MCP prompts.
  • Only published templates are available for selection. Draft or inactive templates do not appear in the Setup UI.
  • Client support is not universal. MCP prompts are only surfaced in clients that implement the MCP Prompts primitive. Verify support in your target client before relying on this capability.
  • Template variable data is pulled using the authenticated user's permissions. If the template references a field the user cannot access, that field will be blank or the call will fail depending on the template's error handling configuration.
  • The use of Prompt Builder templates consumes credits at invocation time, the same as if the template were triggered from the Salesforce UI.