modelcontextprotocol / modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk
Requests with "id": null silently misclassified as notifications
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Description
Initial Checks
- I confirm that I'm using the latest version of MCP Python SDK
- I confirm that I searched for my issue in https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk/issues before opening this issue
Description
When a JSON-RPC request arrives with "id": null, the SDK should reject it. Both JSON-RPC 2.0 and the MCP spec restrict request IDs to strings or integers. Instead, the request is silently reclassified as a JSONRPCNotification and the caller gets a 202 with no response.
This happens because of how JSONRPCMessage union resolution interacts with extra='allow':
RequestIdcorrectly excludesNone(Annotated[int, Field(strict=True)] | str).JSONRPCRequestvalidation rejectsid: null, working as intended.- Pydantic falls through to
JSONRPCNotification, which absorbs"id": Noneas an extra field viaextra='allow'. - The streamable HTTP transport sees "not a request" and returns 202.
The net effect is the caller gets no error and no response, which is hard to debug. Found via authprobe scanning.
I suspect the v2 migration to TypeAdapter and dropping extra='allow' on top-level types would resolve this, but wanted to flag it for the current release line too.
Example Code
from mcp.types import JSONRPCMessage, JSONRPCRequest
msg = {"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "initialize", "id": None}
# JSONRPCRequest correctly rejects null id
try:
JSONRPCRequest.model_validate(msg)
except Exception:
print("JSONRPCRequest rejects null id") # Expected
# JSONRPCMessage falls through to JSONRPCNotification
parsed = JSONRPCMessage.model_validate(msg)
print(type(parsed.root).__name__) # JSONRPCNotification (unexpected)
print(parsed.root.model_extra) # {'id': None}
Python & MCP Python SDK
Python 3.13
mcp 1.14.1 (also reproduced on 1.26.0, latest at time of filing)
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with JSONRPCMessage and JSONRPCRequest validation, then trace how the streamable HTTP transport handles a parsed message. Reproduce the provided null-id example and verify that it is rejected as an invalid request rather than classified as a JSONRPCNotification or answered with 202.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- api
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 48/100