MCP 2026-07-28 spec shifts to stateless protocol core, adds multi-round-trip requests and header-based routing

lee_stott · x · 2026-07-30

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) released the 2026-07-28 specification, transforming from a bidirectional stateful protocol to a request/response stateless core for better reliability and scalability. Key changes include no handshake/sessions, Multi Round-Trip Requests (MRTR), header-based routing, cacheable list results, authorization hardening, a formal extensions framework, and Tasks. SDK downloads approach half a billion monthly, with TypeScript and Python SDKs each surpassing 1 billion total downloads.

Related event: MCP's Epic Update: Shifts to Stateless Core for Enterprise Scaling(26 posts)→

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