Can anyone actually use MCP output?

[geiseri]

I have been pulling my hair out with this. The games I have to play to get the structured output from a MCP tool call are infuriating. Short of writing a custom component I end up with these strange chains of "Parse to get the text column of the tool response" -> "Structured Output to convert that text back into the original json payload from the mcp" -> ... chain of parse->structured output ... -> "The field I wanted in the first place". My smooth brain must be missing something obvious, since being able to handle json should not be so convoluted. Or is it expected that one should be using custom components for manipulating json?

I did see #4326 but the parser kept complaining about "Error running method "filter_data": not all arguments converted during string formatting", #3590 seemed to imply the need of a custom component. Since these are over a year old I am not sure they still count.