Non-normatively reference the MCP specification

[mconroy-cf]

The [[!MCP]] biblio entry currently points at https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/latest, which is a moving target. A normative reference that resolves to different documents over time means two conforming WebMCP implementations can disagree on ToolAnnotations semantics (for example, if a hint field is renamed or its default changes in a later MCP revision) with no change to this spec or to author code.

W3C practice is to cite dated revisions for normative references. This pins to 2026-07-28, which is what /latest resolves to today and matches the ToolAnnotations surface the spec currently describes. The CG can bump the revision deliberately when it chooses to track a newer MCP release.

Bikeshed builds clean with the change. Resolved URL verified to return 200.

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[mconroy-cf]

A quick note on affiliation, since I saw that pop up. This is Matt from Cloudflare. We're supporters of WebMCP (see (https://blog.cloudflare.com/webmcp/) and are doing some work on our side to continue expansion of tooling to our customers.

[w3cbot]

anssiko marked as non substantive for IPR from ash-nazg.

[domfarolino]

Thanks for sending this PR.

A normative reference that resolves to different documents over time means two conforming WebMCP implementations can disagree on ToolAnnotations semantics (for example, if a hint field is renamed or its default changes in a later MCP revision) with no change to this spec or to author code.

I actually don't think this applies, since WebMCP doesn't require tools to be exposed to agents via MCP as an underlying substrate (at least at the moment), nor do I think we're normativel important MCP's tool annotations concepts or semantics and depending on them from this spec.

So I think the best fix is probably to make MCP a non-normative reference ([[MCP]] instead of [[!MCP]]). In that case, I think continuing to link to /latest is actually preferable, since we're pointing readers to the general MCP spec instead of advertising that our spec depends on a particular revision of it.

How does that sound?

[mconroy-cf]

Ah, Dom, yes, sorry. that was silly of me. Thanks for showing me where I was going wrong. I appreciate that.

[anssiko]

A non-normative qualification is appropriate at this moment and the latest reference makes sense in this context. I established the normative status in the beginning, but we've evolved since and should update this.

[domfarolino]

I took the liberty of updating the PR to make the changes we agreed upon. Now this PR only non-normatively links to the MCP specification, and keeps the /latest reference.