HTTP transport swallows non-2xx status codes causing client to hang

Summary

When an MCP server returns non-2xx HTTP status codes (401/403/404/5xx), the Streamable HTTP and SSE transports do not reliably propagate the error to the caller. In the Streamable HTTP transport, post_writer catches exceptions and logs them, but the caller blocks indefinitely waiting for a response on the read stream. HTTP 404 responses are also converted to JSONRPCError(code=32600), losing the original HTTP status information.

Expected Behavior

• Non-2xx HTTP responses should be surfaced as exceptions to the caller, not silently logged
• The original HTTP status code should be preserved and accessible
• Auth-related errors (401/403) should be distinguishable from other failures

Current Behavior

• post_writer in Streamable HTTP transport catches and logs errors without forwarding them through the read stream
• Callers hang indefinitely waiting for a response
• HTTP 404 is converted to JSONRPCError(code=32600), destroying HTTP-level context

Affected Code

• src/mcp/client/streamable_http.py (post_writer)
• src/mcp/client/sse.py (sse_reader)

Related

• #1742 — broader typed error classes design

Beginne damit, die Fehlerbehandlung in src/mcp/client/streamable_http.py, insbesondere in post_writer, und in src/mcp/client/sse.py, insbesondere in sse_reader, nachzuverfolgen. Sieh dir das zugehörige Issue #1742 zum typisierten Fehlerdesign an. Erledigt ist die Aufgabe, wenn Antworten mit nicht-2xx-Status den Aufrufer als Exceptions erreichen, ihren HTTP-Status beibehalten, zwischen 401/403 unterscheiden und Aufrufer nicht länger unbestimmt warten lassen.