Absence is the compatibility contract

The blog discusses a significant breaking change in the MCP protocol with the recent announcement of revision 2026-07-28, which deletes the initialize handshake and introduces a new requirement for every request and result to carry specific metadata. The author, who maintains a CLI tool for interacting with MCP servers, provides insights into the challenges posed by this change as it affects both client and server interactions, particularly for backends that will not be updated for another year.