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+# typescript-sdk Review Conventions
+
+Guidance for reviewing pull requests on this repository. The first three sections are
+stable principles; the **Recurring Catches** section is auto-maintained from past human
+review rounds and grows over time.
+
+## Guiding Principles
+
+1. **Minimalism** — The SDK should do less, not more. Protocol correctness, transport
+   lifecycle, types, and clean handler context belong in the SDK. Middleware engines,
+   registry managers, builder patterns, and content helpers belong in userland.
+2. **Burden of proof is on addition** — The default answer to "should we add this?" is
+   no. Removing something from the public API is far harder than not adding it.
+3. **Justify with concrete evidence** — Every new abstraction needs a concrete consumer
+   today. Ask for real issues, benchmarks, real-world examples; apply the same standard
+   to your own review (link spec sections, link code, show the simpler alternative).
+4. **Spec is the anchor** — The SDK implements the protocol spec. The further a feature
+   drifts from the spec, the stronger the justification needs to be.
+5. **Kill at the highest level** — If the design is wrong, don't review the
+   implementation. Lead with the highest-level concern; specific bugs are supporting
+   detail.
+6. **Decompose by default** — A PR doing multiple things should be multiple PRs unless
+   there's a strong reason to bundle.
+
+## Review Ordering
+
+1. **Design justification** — Is the overall approach sound? Is the complexity warranted?
+2. **Structural concerns** — Is the architecture right? Are abstractions justified?
+3. **Correctness** — Bugs, regressions, missing functionality.
+4. **Style and naming** — Nits, conventions, documentation.
+
+## Checklist
+
+**Protocol & spec**
+- Types match [`schema.ts`](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/blob/main/schema/draft/schema.ts) exactly (optional vs required fields)
+- Correct `ProtocolError` codes (enum `ProtocolErrorCode`); HTTP status codes match spec (e.g., 404 vs 410)
+- Works for both stdio and Streamable HTTP transports — no transport-specific assumptions
+- Cross-SDK consistency: check what `python-sdk` does for the same feature
+
+**API surface**
+- Every new export is intentional (see CLAUDE.md § Public API Exports); helpers users can write themselves belong in a cookbook, not the SDK
+- New abstractions have at least one concrete callsite in the PR
+- One way to do things — improving an existing API beats adding a parallel one
+
+**Correctness**
+- Async: race conditions, cleanup on cancellation, unhandled rejections, missing `await`
+- Error propagation: caught/rethrown properly, resources cleaned up on error paths
+- Type safety: no unjustified `any`, no unsafe `as` assertions
+- Backwards compat: public-interface changes, default changes, removed exports — flagged and justified
+
+**Tests & docs**
+- New behavior has vitest coverage including error paths
+- Breaking changes documented in `docs/migration.md` and `docs/migration-SKILL.md`
+
+## Recurring Catches
+
+### HTTP Transport
+
+- When validating `Mcp-Session-Id`, return **400** for a missing header and **404** for an unknown/expired session — never conflate `!sessionId || !transports[sessionId]` into one status, because the client needs to distinguish "fix your request" from "start a new session". Flag any diff that branches on session-id presence/lookup with a single 4xx. (#1707, #1770)
+
+### Error Handling
+
+- Broad `catch` blocks must not emit client-fault JSON-RPC codes (`-32700` ParseError, `-32602` InvalidParams) for server-internal failures like stream setup, task-store misses, or polling errors — map those to `-32603` InternalError so clients don't retry/reformat pointlessly. Flag any catch-all that hard-codes ParseError/InvalidParams without discriminating the thrown cause. (#1752, #1769)
+
+### Schema Compliance
+
+- When editing Zod protocol schemas in `schemas.ts`, verify unknown-key handling matches the spec `schema.ts`: if the spec type has no `additionalProperties: false`, the SDK schema must use `z.looseObject()` / `.catchall(z.unknown())` rather than implicit strict — over-strict Zod (incl. `z.literal('object')` on `type`) rejects spec-valid payloads from other SDKs. Also confirm `spec.types.test.ts` still passes bidirectionally. (#1768, #1849, #1169)
+
+### Async / Lifecycle
+
+- In `close()` / shutdown paths, wrap user-supplied or chained callbacks (`onclose?.()`, cancel fns) in `try/finally` so a throw can't skip the remaining teardown (`abort()`, `_onclose()`, map clears) — otherwise the transport is left half-open. (#1735, #1763)
+- Deferred callbacks (`setTimeout`, `.finally()`, reconnect closures) must check closed/aborted state before mutating `this._*` or starting I/O — a callback scheduled pre-close can fire after close/reconnect and corrupt the new connection's state (e.g., delete the new request's `AbortController`). (#1735, #1763)
+
+### Completeness
+
+- When a PR replaces a pattern (error class, auth-flow step, catch shape), grep the package for surviving instances of the old form — partial migrations leave sibling code paths with the very bug the PR claims to fix. Flag every leftover site. (#1657, #1761, #1595)
+
+### Documentation & Changesets
+
+- Read added `.changeset/*.md` text and new inline comments against the implementation in the same diff — prose that promises behavior the code no longer ships misleads consumers and contradicts stated intent. Flag any claim the diff doesn't back. (#1718, #1838)
+
+### CI & GitHub Actions
+
+- Do **not** assert that a third-party GitHub Action or publish toolchain will fail or needs extra permissions/tokens without verifying its docs or source — `pnpm publish` delegates to the system npm CLI (so npm OIDC works), and `changesets/action` in publish mode has no PR-comment step requiring `pull-requests: write`. For diffs under `.github/workflows/`, confirm claimed behavior in the action's README/source before flagging. (#1838, #1836)