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The Initialization phase allows Clients and Agents to negotiate protocol versions, capabilities, and authentication methods.

Before a Session can be created, Clients MUST initialize the connection by calling the initialize method with: They SHOULD also provide a name and version to the Agent. 
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 0,
  "method": "initialize",
  "params": {
    "protocolVersion": 1,
    "clientCapabilities": {
      "fs": {
        "readTextFile": true,
        "writeTextFile": true
      },
      "terminal": true
    },
    "clientInfo": {
      "name": "my-client",
      "title": "My Client",
      "version": "1.0.0"
    }
  }
}
The Agent MUST respond with the chosen protocol version and the capabilities it supports. It SHOULD also provide a name and version to the Client as well: 
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 0,
  "result": {
    "protocolVersion": 1,
    "agentCapabilities": {
      "loadSession": true,
      "promptCapabilities": {
        "image": true,
        "audio": true,
        "embeddedContext": true
      },
      "mcp": {
        "http": true,
        "sse": true
      }
    },
    "agentInfo": {
      "name": "my-agent",
      "title": "My Agent",
      "version": "1.0.0"
    },
    "authMethods": []
  }
}

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Protocol version

The protocol versions that appear in the initialize requests and responses are a single integer that identifies a MAJOR protocol version. This version is only incremented when breaking changes are introduced. Clients and Agents MUST agree on a protocol version and act according to its specification. See Capabilities to learn how non-breaking features are introduced.

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Version Negotiation

The initialize request MUST include the latest protocol version the Client supports. If the Agent supports the requested version, it MUST respond with the same version. Otherwise, the Agent MUST respond with the latest version it supports. If the Client does not support the version specified by the Agent in the initialize response, the Client SHOULD close the connection and inform the user about it.

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Capabilities

Capabilities describe features supported by the Client and the Agent. All capabilities included in the initialize request are OPTIONAL. Clients and Agents SHOULD support all possible combinations of their peer’s capabilities. The introduction of new capabilities is not considered a breaking change. Therefore, Clients and Agents MUST treat all capabilities omitted in the initialize request as UNSUPPORTED. Capabilities are high-level and are not attached to a specific base protocol concept. Capabilities may specify the availability of protocol methods, notifications, or a subset of their parameters. They may also signal behaviors of the Agent or Client implementation. Implementations can also advertise custom capabilities using the _meta field to indicate support for protocol extensions.

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Client Capabilities

The Client SHOULD specify whether it supports the following capabilities:

​
File System

​
readTextFile
boolean
The fs/read_text_file method is available.
​
writeTextFile
boolean
The fs/write_text_file method is available.

Learn more about File System methods

​
Terminal

​
terminal
boolean
All terminal/* methods are available, allowing the Agent to execute and manage shell commands.

Learn more about Terminals

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Agent Capabilities

The Agent SHOULD specify whether it supports the following capabilities:
​
loadSession
boolean
The session/load method is available.
​
promptCapabilities
PromptCapabilities Object
Object indicating the different types of content that may be included in session/prompt requests.

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Prompt capabilities

As a baseline, all Agents MUST support ContentBlock::Text and ContentBlock::ResourceLink in session/prompt requests. Optionally, they MAY support richer types of content by specifying the following capabilities:
​
image
boolean
The prompt may include ContentBlock::Image
​
audio
boolean
The prompt may include ContentBlock::Audio
​
embeddedContext
boolean
The prompt may include ContentBlock::Resource

​
MCP capabilities

​
http
boolean
The Agent supports connecting to MCP servers over HTTP.
​
sse
boolean
The Agent supports connecting to MCP servers over SSE.Note: This transport has been deprecated by the MCP spec.

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Session Capabilities

As a baseline, all Agents MUST support session/new, session/prompt, session/cancel, and session/update. Optionally, they MAY support other session methods and notifications by specifying additional capabilities.
session/load is still handled by the top-level load_session capability. This will be unified in future versions of the protocol.

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Implementation Information

Both Clients and Agents SHOULD provide information about their implementation in the clientInfo and agentInfo fields respectively. Both take the following three fields:
​
name
string
Intended for programmatic or logical use, but can be used as a display name fallback if title isn’t present.
​
title
string
Intended for UI and end-user contexts — optimized to be human-readable and easily understood. If not provided, the name should be used for display.
​
version
string
Version of the implementation. Can be displayed to the user or used for debugging or metrics purposes.
Note: in future versions of the protocol, this information will be required.
Once the connection is initialized, you’re ready to create a session and begin the conversation with the Agent.