MCPNews

The Model Context Protocol ecosystem, verified

Current spec 2026-07-28

server/discover

server/discover - The mandatory discovery RPC introduced in 2026-07-28 (SEP-2575): servers advertise their supported protocol versions, capabilities, and identity, and clients may call it before any other request for up-front version selection or as a backward-compatibility probe on stdio. It replaces the removed initialize handshake.

server/discover is the 2026-07-28 revision's front door. With the initialize handshake removed, it is the one RPC every server must implement: it returns the server's supported protocol versions, capabilities, and identity. Clients can call it first to pick a version, skip it entirely and self-describe per request through _meta, or use it as a compatibility probe against stdio servers of unknown vintage. MCP News uses it the same way: a server/discover probe that answers grounds an endpoint's revision support first-hand.

Related concepts

Sources and verification

Last verified · confidence 1.00.

  1. Official 2026-07-28 changelog - "Add server/discover: servers MUST implement this RPC to advertise their supported protocol versions, capabilities, and identity. Clients MAY call it before any other request for up-front version selection, or use it as a backward-compatibility probe on STDIO" (SEP-2575); the same SEP removes the initialize/notifications/initialized handshake - accessed

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