MCP Dev Summit North America

In November 2025 the Model Context Protocol introduced Tasks, which deliver first-class async semantics, something that is both excellent, and hard. Tasks define long-running operations with explicit client/server coordination, TTLs, and lifecycle states. They require durable state beyond ephemeral connections and require developers address distributed-systems concerns like stable task identity, rediscovery via tasks/list, mismatched sync/async expectations, and failures across retries and restarts.

This talk digs into all of those concerns through real implementations. We’ll examine what the spec requires, and what it intentionally leaves open (i.e. how durability is achieved), as well as what happens when clients or servers restart mid-task. We’ll talk about how to do idempotency right, and how those choices shape polling, backpressure, and error handling. We’ll also cover how to best do human-in-the-loop when the Task has input_required, all while avoiding any tight coupling between the client and server.

You’ll come away with concrete practices for building robust async MCP clients and servers, and a clearer mental model of the distributed systems issues the spec encodes.