Amazon updates MCP spec for stateless AI agents
MCP 2026-07-28 drops sessions, scales on HTTP, and adds governance.
Amazon Bedrock's AgentCore Gateway now fully supports the MCP 2026-07-28 specification, marking the largest revision to the Model Context Protocol since its launch. This update transforms MCP from a stateful protocol requiring session management into a stateless HTTP-based standard, eliminating the need for sticky sessions or shared session stores in enterprise deployments.
The new spec introduces governance enhancements including an extensions framework, OAuth 2.0 alignment, and lifecycle guarantees to prevent future breakage. Existing clients continue working unchanged while new clients can opt into the 2026-07-28 version. Every request now carries protocol metadata in its _meta parameter, making tool calls self-contained and routable to any server instance without prior handshakes.
- MCP 2026-07-28 is the first stateless version of the protocol, removing session requirements that previously required sticky load balancing
- The new spec adds governance features like an extensions framework and protocol lifecycle policy to prevent future breaking changes
- AgentCore Gateway supports the new version via UpdateGateway while maintaining backward compatibility with existing clients
Why It Matters
Enables true horizontal scaling for AI agents while reducing infrastructure complexity in enterprise deployments.