MCP C# SDK Hybrid Sessions: Serve Old and New Clients on One Endpoint

The MCP C# SDK hybrid sessions option solves an awkward upgrade boundary: some clients still use the 2025-11-25 initialize handshake and depend on sessions, while clients on 2026-07-28 expect every HTTP request to stand alone. I want both groups to reach one ASP.NET Core endpoint without making modern clients downgrade or stripping useful behavior from legacy clients. The stable C# SDK 2.2.0 release added exactly that path with HttpServerSessionMode.StatefulForInitializeClients . The release notes describe it as hybrid stateful/stateless serving, and the official session-mode guide spells out the per-request behavior. Why one global session switch fails The 2026-07-28 MCP revision removed the initialize handshake and Mcp-Session-Id from its wire format. Client identity, capabilities, and protocol version travel with each request instead. The final specification announcement explains why the core moved toward request/response statelessness. That creates a migration choice for an existing server. With HttpServerSessionMode.Stateful , initialize-era clients receive full sessions. A modern request is refused so a dual-path client can fall back to the older handshake. Compatibility is preserved, but the client does not use the new protocol natively. With HttpServerSessionMode.Stateless , every request is independent. That is the right default for servers that do not need session state, unsolicited notifications, resource subscriptions, or older server-to-client flows. It may be too abrupt when deployed clients still rely on those features. Hybrid mode makes the decision from the incoming request instead of applying one choice to the endpoint. Configure MCP C# SDK hybrid sessions The server configuration is deliberately small: builder . Services . AddMcpServer () . WithHttpTransport ( options => { options . SessionMode = HttpServerSessionMode . StatefulForInitializeClients ; }) . WithTools < DemoTools >(); app . MapMcp ( "/mcp" ); An initialize-era client sends an initial