# MCP Tasks (async): Why Aren't Any Agents Supporting Them? — Cornelia Davis, Temporal

Source: [AI Engineer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4r6nk5WsZw)  
Feed7 permalink: https://feed7.dev/p/mcp-tasks-async-why-aren-t-any-agents-supporting-them-cornelia-davis-tem-1fnlb47  
Published: 2026-08-02T20:00:06.000Z  
Trust: Source Linked (source_linked)

## Why Included

MCP Tasks aim to make long-running tool calls durable across disconnects and crashes. The proposed V2 removes session-heavy state, but polling scale and implementation complexity remain unresolved.

## Source Summary

MCP Tasks gives a long-running tool invocation a durable handle and lifecycle spanning working, input-required, completed, canceled, or failed states. **V1**, released as experimental in November, requires tasks to survive client, server, connection, and human delays.

## Practical Implication

If an agent launches work that may outlive a request, persist the task and design for retries, restarts, human input, and result recovery. The proposed **V2** moves toward a stateless core, removes task listing, and replaces long-session input handling with a client update endpoint.

## Agent-Ready Context

MCP Tasks gives a long-running tool invocation a durable handle and lifecycle spanning working, input-required, completed, canceled, or failed states. **V1**, released as experimental in November, requires tasks to survive client, server, connection, and human delays.

If an agent launches work that may outlive a request, persist the task and design for retries, restarts, human input, and result recovery. The proposed **V2** moves toward a stateless core, removes task listing, and replaces long-session input handling with a client update endpoint.

V2 is described as cleaner but still involved, and the talk says it was expected in **July** rather than presenting a finalized release. Per-task polling also does not scale to millions of tasks; a notification mechanism was promising but unfinished.

## Connected Context

Feed7 judgment across 330 accumulated Signals:

MCP Tasks defines durability as a protocol-level lifecycle rather than merely running work in the background. It clarifies the persistence, retry, recovery, cancellation, and human-input obligations behind long-running tools, while narrowing near-term adoption because V2 was not finalized and per-task polling still lacks a scalable replacement.

- [Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API: background tasks, remote MCP and more](https://feed7.dev/p/expanding-managed-agents-gemini-api-1idue29) — Gemini Managed Agents confirm demand for background execution, while MCP Tasks specifies additional lifecycle guarantees that asynchronous execution alone does not establish.
- [Latest MCP spec now supported in mcp-handler](https://feed7.dev/p/latest-mcp-spec-now-supported-in-mcp-handler-1kkt3s0) — The stateless 2026 protocol support aligns with MCP Tasks V2’s move toward a stateless core, while the migration requirements illustrate the compatibility cost of protocol evolution.
- [Vercel MCP can now deploy code](https://feed7.dev/p/vercel-mcp-can-now-deploy-code-1292qsq) — Deployment is a concrete long-running mutation that benefits from a durable task handle, especially because receiving an early URL does not prove the build completed successfully.
- [MCP Apps: Extending the Frontier — Ido Salomon & Liad Yosef](https://feed7.dev/p/mcp-apps-extending-the-frontier-ido-salomon-liad-yosef-1gtlsr9) — MCP Apps could present task status or request human input, but MCP Tasks supplies the durable lifecycle underneath; the interactive view does not itself survive disconnects or restarts.

## Context Map

- Layer: context
- Domains: coding
- Topics: mcp, tool-use, agent-reliability

## Uncertainty

- V2 is described as cleaner but still involved, and the talk says it was expected in **July** rather than presenting a finalized release. Per-task polling also does not scale to millions of tasks; a notification mechanism was promising but unfinished.

## Agent Instruction

Use this item as source-backed context. Do not invent claims beyond the linked source. If this item conflicts with another source, call out the conflict.