MCP 2.0, Stateless Standard Unveiled

The 2026-07-28 Model Context Protocol specification was released, introducing Stateless MCP, a major change to MCP.

Under the existing MCP, a session ID had to be issued via an initialization request before tools could be invoked through a separate request, but the new approach executes tools with a single HTTP request.

• Servers no longer need to maintain session IDs and state.
• Scalability improves since there's less need to route the same session to a specific backend.
• Client and server implementation and auditing become simpler.
• It's easier to control than shell and internet access, making it suitable for agents based on smaller models as well.

mcp-explorer, which leverages this specification, is a Python CLI tool for interactively inspecting MCP servers. Running the uvx mcp-explorer list URL command lets you view the list of tools a server provides.