* Add structured output to the Python weather server and client
Both tools declare an output schema - the return type annotation - and return
structured_content alongside the text.
get_alerts answers with a top-level JSON array rather than an array nested in
an object, which protocol revision 2026-07-28 is the first to allow. "No
alerts" is simply []. get_forecast returns an object, for contrast.
The detail worth reading the source for: Alerts is a RootModel[list[Alert]],
not a plain list[Alert]. A list is not a JSON object, so the SDK wraps it as
{"result": [...]} and advertises an object-rooted schema to match, with no
opt-out. A RootModel is a BaseModel, so it is taken as the schema exactly as
written, and a RootModel over a list serializes as the bare list.
Error paths raise: a tool declaring an output schema MUST return conforming
structured content, so a path with no data has to fail.
The client moves to the 2.0 Client API with mode="auto" and prints the
negotiated version on connect. call_tool already revalidates every non-error
result against the declared schema, so the client-side SHOULD needs no code.
Each channel goes to its stated reader: content is forwarded to the model,
structured_content is used as data, reporting how many items came back.
This clears the staleness modelcontextprotocol#3124 flags against this
repository - weather.py imported mcp.server.fastmcp, client.py held the
ClientSession version - and matches that PR's idioms: the short
"from mcp.server import MCPServer" spelling, httpx2 with httpx dropped from
the dependencies since httpx2>=2.5.0 is a hard dependency of mcp,
result.content narrowed to TextContent, and input() on a worker thread.
Requires mcp 2.0.0b2; pyproject.toml sets [tool.uv] prerelease = "allow" so
plain uv run and uv sync work without flags. Model identifier moves to
claude-sonnet-5.
Note that an array-rooted schema only works on a 2026-07-28 connection. This
SDK does not project it down for older clients; it raises server-side instead.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Update to mcp 2.0.0
The SDK left beta on 2026-07-28, so the pins move off 2.0.0b2 and both
projects drop `[tool.uv] prerelease = allow` — plain `uv run` works now.
Also from review: declare the imports rather than lean on transitive
resolution. weather.py imports httpx2 and client.py imports mcp_types, so
both are listed explicitly. The client README no longer implies every
structured result is counted — only array-rooted ones are.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Fix get_alerts failing when NWS sends a null field
`dict.get(key, default)` returns the default only when the key is absent. The
NWS API sends these fields as explicit nulls instead of omitting them, so
`props.get(instruction, ...)` passed None straight into a `str` field and
Pydantic rejected the whole result.
One alert in eight for TX is a Special Weather Statement with a null
instruction, which was enough to fail the entire call:
Error executing tool get_alerts: 1 validation error for Alert
instructions
Input should be a valid string [type=string_type, input_value=None]
The smoke test missed it twice over: it calls get_alerts with CA, whose
alerts happen to have no nulls today, and it reports an isError result as a
skip rather than a failure.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Say "structured content", not "structured output"
The spec never uses the phrase "structured output". It defines two separate
things under Tool Result: "Structured Content" (the `structuredContent` field)
and "Output Schema" (the `outputSchema` field). Collapsing them into
"structured output" conflates the two.
It is also actively confusing here. In LLM tooling "structured output" means
constrained decoding — making the *model* emit conforming JSON. These clients
call a model API, so a reader could reasonably take the phrase to mean the
tool constrains the model's response, which is the opposite of what is going
on: the tool describes the shape of its own result.
Headings and prose now say "structured content". References to real
identifiers are left alone: the Python SDK's own docs page is called
Structured Output and lives at docs/servers/structured-output.md, and its
decorator parameter is `structured_output`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
