streamable_http client does not send `Origin` header → rejected with 403 by spec-compliant servers (e.g. go-sdk `CrossOriginProtection`)

[fede-kamel]

Summary

The Python SDK's streamable_http_client opens its POST handshake without an Origin header (and without Sec-Fetch-Site). The official Go SDK (modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk v1.4.x) wraps every streamable-HTTP handler with Go 1.25's stdlib http.CrossOriginProtection, which enforces the spec's anti-DNS-rebinding rule and denies any state-changing request that cannot prove same-origin via one of:

• Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin | same-site | none (browser-only), or
• An Origin header whose host matches the server's Host, or
• An origin explicitly listed via CrossOriginProtection.AddTrustedOrigin.

Since the Python client sends none of those, a perfectly legitimate server-to-server connection from the official Python client to the official Go server is indistinguishable from a CSRF attempt → HTTP 403 Forbidden on the very first POST.

So the two reference SDKs from the same org are out of sync by one spec revision: the Go server enforces the new rule; the Python client doesn't yet send the headers that satisfy it.

Reproduction

Server — a Go MCP server built with modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk@v1.4.1 and the standard handler:

handler := mcp.NewStreamableHTTPHandler(
    func(_ *http.Request) *mcp.Server { return srv },
    nil, // default CrossOriginProtection: deny non-same-origin
)
http.Handle("/mcp", handler)

Client — Python mcp SDK:

from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamablehttp_client
from mcp.client.session import ClientSession

async with streamablehttp_client("http://my-go-server:8081/mcp") as (read, write, _):
    async with ClientSession(read, write) as session:
        await session.initialize()   # never completes

Observed:

1. httpx POSTs to /mcp with no Origin header, no Sec-Fetch-* headers.
2. Go server returns HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden immediately.
3. Python client post_writer swallows the non-2xx (see HTTP transport swallows non-2xx status codes causing client to hang #2110), and session.initialize() hangs forever on the read stream.
4. Eventually the caller (e.g. a FastAPI startup hook with a wait_for timeout) cancels, which surfaces as RuntimeError: Attempted to exit cancel scope in a different task than it was entered in because the streamable_http_client task group was entered in one task and is being torn down in another.

Expected: the Python client should send an Origin header derived from the target URL by default, so a spec-compliant server accepts the handshake.

Workarounds (today)

• Server side, Go: pass &mcp.StreamableHTTPHandlerOptions{CrossOriginProtection: cop} with cop.AddTrustedOrigin(...), or set GODEBUG=disablecrossoriginprotection=1. Both require code/env changes on every server deployment.
• Client side, Python: monkey-patch the httpx client to inject Origin. Brittle; depends on internals of streamable_http.

Neither is satisfactory if both reference SDKs are supposed to interoperate out of the box.

Suggested fix

In mcp.client.streamable_http, when opening the httpx.AsyncClient, derive a default Origin header from the target URL's scheme + netloc and add it to every outgoing request:

parsed = urlparse(self.url)
default_origin = f"{parsed.scheme}://{parsed.netloc}"
headers.setdefault("Origin", default_origin)

This makes the Python client's traffic indistinguishable from a same-origin browser request as far as CrossOriginProtection.Check is concerned, without weakening any server's CSRF posture. Callers who want a different Origin (e.g. multi-tenant proxies) can still override via the existing custom-headers path.

Optionally, also set Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin so the Go middleware short-circuits on the cheaper check.

Related

• HTTP transport swallows non-2xx status codes causing client to hang #2110 — explains why the resulting 403 manifests as a client hang instead of a clean exception.
• Guide: Resolving "421 Invalid Host Header" (DNS Rebinding Protection) #1798 / Add support for DNS rebinding protections #861 — the Python server added equivalent DNS-rebinding protection; the client never picked up the matching header behavior.

Environment

• mcp (Python SDK): latest installed via mcp >= 1.x (tested under Locus's locus.integrations.fastmcp.MCPClient wrapper, which is a thin pass-through to streamablehttp_client).
• modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk@v1.4.1 (server).
• Go 1.25 (stdlib http.CrossOriginProtection).
• Python 3.13, anyio 4.x.