A team's integration relies on sampling, which revision 2026-07-28 marks as Deprecated. What does that status mean for the team?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Deprecated is a 'moving out' notice, not an eviction. Your sampling integration keeps working for now, but you should plan the move before the removal window opens. Don't confuse deprecated with removed, or with 'safe forever.'
Full Explanation
Under MCP's feature lifecycle policy, a Deprecated feature remains part of the specification but is scheduled for removal. New implementations SHOULD NOT adopt it, and existing implementations SHOULD migrate before the feature's earliest removal. For sampling, deprecated in revision 2026-07-28, the earliest removal is the first revision released on or after 2027-07-28, and the documented migration path is integrating directly with LLM provider APIs. The earliest removal marks eligibility only; actual removal is a maintainer decision during release preparation and may come later. Saying sampling was removed in this revision confuses deprecated with removed; the registry lists no features removed under the policy so far. Treating deprecation as a permanent, purely informational label ignores the scheduled removal and the migration guidance. Tying sampling to the Tasks extension invents a dependency; Tasks is an optional extension for long-running operations and has nothing to do with whether sampling works. Exam caveat: roots, logging and Dynamic Client Registration were deprecated in the same revision, and some older items such as the HTTP+SSE transport follow their own removal timelines. Operational check: inventory every use of deprecated features, record each migration path, and schedule the change well ahead of the 2027-07-28 eligibility date.