Inspector V2 Working Group Meeting - Jun 17, 2026

Agenda

• Items on the V2 board and planning
  • Discuss the Zustand store spike (moved from v1.5 board)
  • Server catalog - refining the shape (Bob has some pre-spec docs)
• Discuss progress toward readiness for a release candidate.

Attendees

• Cliff Hall
• Bob Dickinson
• Marcelo Jimenez Rocabado

Discussion

Release-candidate progress. @cliffhall reported the V2 Inspector is nearly a complete replacement on the v2/main branch, with the CLI/TUI/launcher port landed and the core wired in. The remaining push is toward a release candidate rather than net-new architecture.

Single unified package. The group confirmed shipping the CLI, TUI, and web components as one consolidated package via the launcher rather than publishing them separately. @BobDickinson: "I don't see any real value in shipping the client separately ... the launcher gets them what they want." Dropping the separate npm workspaces was deliberate — @cliffhall noted the workspace setup "caused as many problems as it solved."

Catalog vs. config launcher flags. @cliffhall demoed the catalog/session launch model. --catalog opens a writable catalog with full CRUD; --config opens a read-only session where "all of the CRUD affordances are gone — all the edit and delete and clone and settings on the server card are gone." Both accept flexible inbound serialization so different mcp.json shapes can be read, but a --config source is never written back, since the Inspector's canonical internal structure may not match the source format (protecting a foreign config from corruption).

Zustand store spike — decided against. After reviewing the spike (PR #1145), the team chose not to adopt Zustand. The existing localized, abstract state managers already provide the needed separation — @BobDickinson: "we already had that level of separation in the way the state managers worked." @cliffhall framed it as a dependency-discipline call: dependencies "really have to earn their keep," and the spike showed comparable complexity with minimal gains.

Protocol-version detection / v1↔v2 fallback. Consensus on automatic protocol detection over manual user selection. Marcelo Jimenez Rocabado: "you just want to make it work like magic ... try to connect with the new protocol first; if you can't, just fall back to the old one." @cliffhall agreed the first thing the client establishes is the protocol version, then sets anything new the version requires — falling back to legacy handling for older v1 servers without user configuration.

SDK V1 vs. V2 strategy. The Inspector stays on the stable V1 TypeScript SDK for now, with SDK usage concentrated in one place so the eventual switch is surgical. @cliffhall: "we were more concerned with getting a solid replacement for V1 than ... riding the bleeding edge of the V2 SDK." V2 SDK adoption is expected alongside the final spec; Konstantin to debrief the group on SDK changes in a future meeting.

Issues-first contribution policy. To curb the influx of unsolicited, potentially AI-generated PRs, the team will require PRs to correspond to maintainer-approved issues, with a labeled "design phase" review for features before implementation. @BobDickinson: "I would rather have a well-written issue than a PR ... once you've worked through the problem and figured out the kinks, then go create the issue." Contributor guidelines will be updated for the V2 release.

Authentication for July / Cross-App Auth. @BobDickinson will validate the OAuth-related changes ahead of the July release; "step-up" auth (requesting additional scopes after initial auth) should be SDK-handled or a minor addition. He also flagged Cross-App Auth (XAA) — used by Okta and others — where enterprise users authenticate once to their IdP and get federated, per-server-scoped access to XAA-supporting MCP servers with no extra UX, which also enables central revocation (relevant to scheduled-agent scenarios).

Next Steps

• Bob Dickinson: Review/validate the OAuth changes for the July release; create a Cross-App Auth (XAA) support issue; test launcher stdio functionality and backward compatibility.
• Marcelo Jimenez Rocabado: Review and provide feedback on the V2 Inspector code.
• The group: Update the contributor guidelines for the V2 release (issues-first / design-phase policy).

Transcript

• Gemini Meeting Transcript / Summary

Operational Details

• Our Charter
• Weekly Working Group Meeting takes place Wednesdays 11am EST on Google Meet
• Agenda / Meeting Notes are published on GitHub Discussions
• We are planning on an Inspector V2 kanban board in GitHub Project
• We are building on a v2/main branch of the Inspector repo
• We are experimenting on a v1.5/main branch of the Inspector repo
• View the Open pull requests labeled as V2
• View the Open issues labeled as V2