## Motivation and Context
The ping utility says the receiver "MUST respond promptly with an empty response",
and a server may treat a missing answer as a stale connection and drop it. Both reference SDKs honor
that on the client side (the TypeScript protocol layer installs an automatic pong,
and the Python session answers `PingRequest` with an empty result), but this client answered
a server ping with Method not found over Streamable HTTP and ignored it entirely over stdio,
leaving long-lived legacy sessions vulnerable to a liveness-checking server.
Over HTTP, an unhandled `ping` is now answered with the empty result in `dispatch_server_request`.
The default deliberately does not live in `@server_request_handlers`: that registry's `any?` opens
the GET listening stream on connect, and a built-in pong must not change listener behavior -
a server can only ping on a stream that is already open. A handler registered via
`on_server_request("ping")` still wins.
Over stdio, the read loop now answers a ping frame inline and keeps waiting for its response.
Frames are told apart by shape rather than id: one carrying `method` is a request or notification,
never the awaited response, so a server-chosen ping id that collides with the awaited one is still answered -
and a request frame can no longer be returned to the caller as if it were the response.
Between requests nothing reads stdout, so a queued ping is answered when the next request starts reading,
which is inherent to the single-threaded stdio client. Other server-to-client requests over stdio stay
unsupported as documented.
The pong is best effort on both transports, in the ways the reference SDKs imply: a pong that cannot be written
over a broken stdin is dropped instead of failing the unrelated request whose response the loop is reading,
and a ping whose id is not a String or a Number - a shape the TypeScript and Python schemas reject outright -
is not answered with a pong: over stdio it is skipped entirely, and over HTTP it falls through to Method not found,
exactly as before this change.
The modern lifecycle removes `ping` altogether (SEP-2575), so this applies to handshake-lifecycle connections only.
## How Has This Been Tested?
New transport tests: over HTTP, a ping delivered on the SSE stream results in a POSTed empty-result response with
the ping's id, and a user-registered `"ping"` handler overrides the default; over stdio, a ping injected while
a response is awaited is answered on stdin and the original response still returns. Both fail without the change
(Method not found / no answer). Further tests cover the best-effort edges: a pong write failure over
a closed stdin leaves the awaited response intact, and a malformed-id ping is skipped over stdio
and answered with Method not found over HTTP. `bundle exec rake` (tests, RuboCop, and conformance baseline) passes.
## Breaking Changes
None. A server ping that previously received Method not found (or nothing) now receives the empty result
the specification requires.
Three pages carried names the 2026-07-28 specification does not use: "Multi-Round-Trip Results" for
the pattern the specification titles Multi Round-Trip Requests (MRTR) and serves at basic/patterns/mrtr -
the results are the `InputRequiredResult` wire type, not the feature - plus "Completions" for the utility
the specification titles Completion, and "Notification Subscriptions" for the pattern it titles Subscriptions.
Retitle the three pages to the specification's names, move them to /server/mrtr/ and /client/mrtr/,
/server/completion/, and /server/subscriptions/ following the specification's slugs, update every internal reference,
and keep the URLs published with v1.3.0 working via jekyll-redirect-from.
The Discovery page keeps its title but moves from /server/discovery/ to /server/discover/, matching
the specification's slug and the `server/discover` RPC, with its published URL redirected the same way.
Move the documentation that had grown to 3000+ lines in README.md onto https://ruby.sdk.modelcontextprotocol.io
and slim the README down to a quick start and feature overview, following the Python SDK layout:
- Add 21 server pages as the docs/_server/ collection (overview plus transports, discovery, tools, prompts, resources,
roots, sampling, elicitation, multi round-trip results, notifications, notification subscriptions, cancellation, progress,
ping, completions, logging, pagination, server context, configuration, and custom methods), 8 client pages as
the docs/_client/ collection (overview, transports, lifecycle, multi round-trip results, cancellation, ping, pagination,
and authorization), and 3 extension pages as the docs/_extensions/ collection (overview, capability extensions, and MCP Apps,
following the Extensions Overview recommendation that SDK documentation list the supported extensions) -
one page per topic, ordered to match the sidebar of the 2026-07-28 specification, with the client-side APIs
(pinging, cancelling, and paginating from MCP::Client) documented under Building Clients
- Add top-level Examples and Protocol Versions pages after Installation, linking the runnable examples in examples/
and summarizing the supported protocol versions, the era model, and client negotiation
- Render the three sections as just-the-docs collections, which list every page beneath a plain category heading in
the sidebar with no folding, and serve every page at an extensionless URL under /server/, /client/, and /extensions/,
matching the sibling SDK documentation sites
- Replace docs/building-servers.md and docs/building-clients.md with redirects to the new section overview pages via
jekyll-redirect-from, redirect the previously published /installation.html to its extensionless URL, fold their content
that was missing from README.md into the new pages, and update the Tool argument keys reference comment in lib/mcp/server.rb to
the relocated Tools page
- Reduce README.md to the badges, a compact feature overview in the Python SDK style, installation instructions, a stdio
server and client quick start, and a License section, using absolute URLs for the remaining repository links
so they resolve on rubygems.org
- Adapt formatting where GitHub rendering habits break on the site: convert the numbered "three ways to define" lists into headings,
since kramdown restarts numbering at 1 when code blocks split list items, convert GitHub-style alerts into just-the-docs callouts
with the SEP-2260 server-to-client association note raised to a red warning, merge the duplicated Exception Reporting
and Configuration Block Data sections into the Configuration page, and relocate the Streamable HTTP settings that were nested under
the Logging section into the Transports page
- Refresh the migrated content against the current implementation: correct stale claims and broken samples the README carried,
note on each session-era feature how it relates to the modern lifecycle of MCP 2026-07-28, and point spec links at the latest revision,
keeping deliberate 2025-11-25 pins for pages the modern revision removed
- Style the site after the Rails API documentation palette (red links and accents on neutral surfaces) with matching
light and dark color schemes, center the sidebar and content as one block, add a Previous/Next footer pager following
the sidebar order, open external links in a new tab, and serve the MCP logo as the favicon
Every code block and heading from the previous README was verified to have a home in the new docs pages or the slimmed README before
the reduction; a few samples were corrected rather than copied, as noted above.
Koichi ITO