[Jose Alvarez (jpalvarezl)]

Motivation & Context

The MCP 2.x migration currently excludes tools whose execution.taskSupport is either "required" or "optional". The MCP Tasks specification permits optional tools to be invoked through an ordinary tools/call, so this removes working Foundry Toolbox, Power BI, and knowledge-base tools from agents even though no task augmentation is requested.

This change restores those optional tools without adding or emulating Tasks-extension support. Tools that require task augmentation remain unavailable until the client supports the extension.

Description & Review Guide

• What are the major changes? Skip only tools with taskSupport == "required"; allow optional tools through the existing plain tools/call path; update regression coverage to verify loading, metadata retention, invocation, and warning behavior; make the warning version-neutral; and clarify the Tasks boundary in ADR 0045 and the core package guidance.
• What is the impact of these changes? Optional-task tools are available again and behave like ordinary MCP tools. Required-task, forbidden-task, and task-free behavior remains unchanged.
• What do you want reviewers to focus on? Confirm that the ordinary-call behavior matches the MCP optional-task contract and that the documentation consistently distinguishes optional support from required task augmentation. The complete MCP core test file passed (465 passed, 2 skipped), and uv run poe syntax -P core passed.

Related Issue

Fixes #9675

#9690 contains the same core predicate correction and focused test update. This maintainer-owned PR additionally removes the stale SDK-version diagnostic and synchronizes ADR 0045 and the core contributor guidance with the intended behavior. The existing community PR will be handled separately by the maintainer.

AI Assistance

• No material AI assistance was used.
• This is an AI-assisted contribution. I reviewed, understood, and verified all submitted content and accept responsibility for it.

AI assistance details: GitHub Copilot assisted with issue and specification analysis, implementation, regression-test updates, documentation clarification, validation, and this PR description.

Contribution Checklist

• The code builds clean without any errors or warnings
• All unit tests pass, and I have added new tests where possible
• The PR follows the Contribution Guidelines
• This PR links to an agreed issue with no competing open PR, or the Related Issue section documents a trivial-change or repository-automation exception.
• This is not a breaking change. If it is a breaking change, add the breaking change label (or add "[BREAKING]" to the title prefix, before or after a language prefix such as Python: or .NET: — workflows keep the label and title prefix in sync automatically.

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The narrow filtering correction preserves required-task exclusion and is supported by focused regression coverage and consistent documentation.

No open issues 🎉

What changed in this PR

Restores optional-task MCP tools to Python agents through ordinary tools/call, addressing #9675 without adding Tasks-extension support.

Changes:

• Excludes only tools that require task augmentation and makes the warning version-neutral.
• Updates regression coverage for optional-tool loading, metadata retention, invocation, and required-tool warnings.
• Aligns the lifecycle ADR and core contributor guidance with the supported Tasks boundary.

File	Description
python/​packages/​core/​tests/​core/​test_mcp.py	Verifies optional tools remain available while required tools are skipped.
python/​packages/​core/​AGENTS.md	Clarifies client limitations and updates the Tasks tracking issue.
python/​packages/​core/​agent_framework/​_mcp.py	Limits filtering to required-task tools and updates the warning.
docs/​decisions/​0045-python-mcp-v2-client-lifecycle.md	Documents ordinary calls for optional-task tools.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

[github-actions]

MAF Automated Review — Iteration 1

Result: No findings
Scope: full PR (1 commit(s)): fada4953d5c7
Model: gpt-5.6-sol

Overview

The PR narrows MCP discovery filtering so tools with optional Tasks support use the existing ordinary tools/call path, while tools that require the unsupported extension remain hidden. The required-tool check runs before metadata and function publication, and existing allow-list, approval, argument-filtering, atomic-refresh, and lifecycle guards continue to apply. Focused regression coverage verifies discovery, metadata retention, warning behavior, and invocation, with no supported Critical, High, or Medium residual risk.

Reviewed the supplied pull-request change set across correctness, security/reliability, architecture, and failure behavior.
No publishable findings remained after source verification for this scope.

[github-code-quality]

Code coverage overview

Languages: Python

Python / code-coverage/python

main 1168c00	jpalvarezl-mcp-exten... fada495	+/-
92%	92%	0%

ℹ️ Calculations represent line coverage. Results may change as calculations are updated.