Skip to content

Stateless: The Future of MCP Transports - Shaun Smith, Hugging Face & Kurtis Van Gent, Google#

MCP Dev Summit North America 2026 digest Program Core pick 2–3 April 2026

Abstract

Shaun Smith, Open Source Agents / MCP, Hugging Face; Kurtis Van Gent, MCP Core Maintainer (Transports Working Group lead), Google

  • Why: Described as one of the largest protocol changes since MCP's launch — it directly determines how you deploy, scale, and operate MCP servers. The roadmap/migration content makes this planning-relevant now.
  • What: The move to stateless MCP transports, motivated with real adoption data from Google and Hugging Face; the latest approaches for serverless Elicitation, Sampling, and Sessions; the application and infrastructure patterns that statelessness unlocks (e.g., MCP Apps); and migration timeline and approach (from abstract only).
  • How: Removing per-connection session state from the protocol so servers become horizontally scalable and serverless-friendly; the Working Group session details what replaces session-bound semantics.
  • Where applicable: Protocol-level and therefore broadly applicable; anyone operating remote MCP servers today needs to track the migration. Pairs directly with the Envoy/proxy talk below.