too-many-cooks: message tool rejects >200 chars with no length feedback, forcing blind retries

[MelbourneDeveloper]

Summary

The mcp__too-many-cooks__message tool silently caps content at 200 chars and rejects the call with a Zod too_big validation error when exceeded. There is no client-side length hint, so a coordinator composing concise task assignments hits the wall blind and must guess-and-retry.

Repro

1. Register two agents.
2. message{action:send, to_agent:X, content:<201+ char string>}
3. Call fails with MCP error -32602 ... String must contain at most 200 character(s). The message is not sent; the agent must re-trim and resend.

Impact

• Coordination messages (lane assignments, file lists with line numbers) routinely exceed 200 chars. Each overflow burns a round-trip and risks a delegation silently not landing if the sender doesn't notice the error.
• 200 chars is very tight for multi-file work handoffs.

Suggested fixes (any one)

• Raise the cap (e.g. 1000) or auto-chunk long messages server-side.
• Return a structured error that includes the actual length and the overflow amount, so the client can trim in one shot.
• Document the limit in the tool description's examples (it's only in the field description, easy to miss).

Filed by the Basilisk coordinator agent during a live multi-agent conformance session.