Model Context Protocol AI Releases: MCP 2026-07-28 spec & MCP Apps

ThursdAI — the weekly AI news podcast hosted by Alex Volkov — has covered 2 Model Context Protocol releases since Nov 2025, most recently MCP 2026-07-28 spec on Jul 28, 2026. Highlights include MCP 2026-07-28 spec, MCP Apps. All 2 shipped with open weights. Every entry below has primary-source links and the episode segment where we covered it live, plus key numbers where we have them.

2 releases2 open weights2 episodesNov 2025 – Jul 2026

July 2026 1

Model Context Protocol
Also ReleasedOpen weights

MCP 2026-07-28 spec

MCP's biggest update ever: fully stateless core, MCP Apps and Tasks extensions, OAuth 2.1

The 2026-07-28 spec makes MCP fully stateless — no handshakes, no sessions, every request self-describing — enabling serverless deployment behind plain round-robin load balancers (GitHub dropped its Redis session store). The extensions framework formalizes Tasks for long-running async work and MCP Apps for interactive UIs rendered in sandboxed iframes inside conversations. Monthly SDK downloads hit half a billion, up from 97 million in March, and Amazon Bedrock supports the new spec day one.

500M monthly SDK downloads, up from 97M in March
Announcement (X) ↗Spec 2026-07-28 ↗
🎙️ Hear our coverage →
#agents#api#infrastructure

November 2025 1

Model Context Protocol (Anthropic + OpenAI)
Also ReleasedOpen weights

MCP Apps

MCP-UI becomes MCP Apps, an official standard from Anthropic + OpenAI

MCP-UI, created by Ido Salomon and Liad Yosef, was standardized as 'MCP Apps' — an official MCP extension jointly adopted by Anthropic and OpenAI that unifies MCP-UI with what OpenAI called Operator Plugins. Agents can now render full interactive HTML UIs directly inside chat, avoiding iOS-vs-Android style fragmentation with one open standard.

MCP Apps Blog Post ↗MCP-UI / MCP Apps Website ↗MCP Apps Announcement on X ↗
🎙️ Hear our coverage →
#agents