Samples¶

NEON tracks physical samples (beetle pinnings, soil cores, DNA extracts, …) from collection through subsampling and archiving¹. Tools: neon_list_sample_classes (no token) and neon_get_sample (token).

Sample classes¶

A sample class such as bet_IDandpinning_in.individualID names the NEON table and field an identifier comes from. neon_list_sample_classes lists all supported classes with descriptions (filter with query), or the classes one sample_tag belongs to. A tag with no classes returns an empty list, not an error.

One sample¶

Identify a sample by exactly one of sample_tag (+ sample_class), sample_uuid, barcode or archive_guid. The result lists its custody events (each event's field entries folded into an object; keep only some with fields), and its parent and child samples. degree=N (1–5) also returns relatives up to N steps away.

Asking which class (MRTR)¶

A sample tag can belong to several classes. When you pass a tag without a class:

• if the client supports elicitation, neon-mcp returns an MCP input_required result asking the user to pick one of the candidate classes; the client retries with the answer and neon-mcp re-checks that it is still a valid class for the tag²;
• otherwise the call fails with ambiguous_input and lists the candidates.

The continuation (requestState) holds only the question — never the token.