## Motivation and Context
An MCP server chooses the authorization server its users sign in to. It names one in `authorization_servers`
in its Protected Resource Metadata, and states the scopes it wants in `scopes_supported`
or in the `WWW-Authenticate` challenge. Nothing binds either choice to the server's own identity.
No origin rule can settle this, because an authorization server is legitimately a different origin
from the resource it protects. Validating that a token was issued for the intended audience is a responsibility
the specification places on MCP servers rather than on clients, and there is no portable way for a client
to perform it either: access tokens are frequently opaque, and an authorization server is not required to honor
the `resource` parameter or to report an audience in the token response.
Two things follow from that, and they are separate.
The first is a judgement, and it belongs to whoever embeds this SDK, because an application often knows
which providers its users deal with. `authorization_request_validator` is handed an `AuthorizationRequest` describing
the authorization server, the scopes, the MCP server, and the RFC 8707 resource, and can refuse.
It is one object rather than keyword arguments so that later revisions of the specification can add to it
without changing the shape implementers wrote. It runs on all three grants, and on the authorization-code grant it
runs before dynamic client registration, which is why scope resolution moved above `ensure_client_registered`:
a refusal must not leave this client registered at an authorization server the host just rejected.
The second is not a judgement and is enforced here rather than asked about. `refresh!` rediscovers
the authorization server on every call, so the server named for a session can differ from the one
the stored tokens came from. SEP-2352 already binds client credentials to their issuer,
but that check passes when the issuer was never recorded and is deliberately skipped for a Client ID Metadata Document URL,
which is portable across authorization servers. The issuer that minted the tokens is now recorded with them,
and `refresh!` refuses to present them to a different one. The transport answers that refusal by running
a full authorization, which brings the new authorization server to the validator above. Tokens stored before
this carry no issuer and keep refreshing.
The hook decides whether to proceed, not what to ask for. The scopes reach the authorization server unchanged either way,
because the specification requires a client to treat the scopes in the challenge as authoritative for the operation,
and narrowing them silently would break that.
## How Has This Been Tested?
New tests in `test/mcp/client/oauth/flow_test.rb` assert what the validator receives, that a refusal raises
before any registration request is sent and before the redirect handler runs, and that the `client_credentials`
and `jwt-bearer` grants consult it too. Others cover the issuer recorded on authorization, the refusal to refresh against
a different one, and that tokens stored without an issuer still refresh. A test in `test/mcp/client/oauth/http_oauth_test.rb`
drives the two halves together: a stale issuer makes the refresh fail, the transport reauthorizes, and the validator sees
the newly named authorization server while no refresh token is ever posted to it. Each of them fails with its half of
this change removed. `bundle exec rake` (tests, RuboCop, and conformance baseline) passes.
## Breaking Changes
Refreshing now fails when the authorization server named for a session differs from the one that issued the stored tokens,
and the caller reauthorizes instead. Tokens stored before this change carry no recorded issuer and are unaffected
until their next authorization. The validator itself is additive: it defaults to `nil`, and a provider that does not offer
it authorizes as before.
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