Tools, Not Clicks
Release history

Editions and changes

Every edition of the book is a numbered version. Each one is also published as a PDF and an EPUB built from exactly the same text. A major version is a new edition, a minor version adds or rewrites sections, and a patch version fixes mistakes.

Version 2.0.2

2026-11-02this edition

Fixed

  • The copyright and licence lines across the book's repositories name the author, Maxim Salnikov, and every repository link points to github.com/webmaxru.
  • The demos repository's licence reads "Copyright (c) 2026 Maxim Salnikov".

Version 2.0.1

2026-11-02

Fixed

  • Links to the book's repositories now point to their new home under github.com/webmaxru (the old addresses redirect). The demos repository is public.
  • Appendix C's note on link checks says which repository is private.
  • The Leanpub page is https://leanpub.com/webmcp.
  • The release history no longer links to the private repository's release pages.

Version 2.0.0

2026-11-02

The second edition. Every chapter, listing and figure was checked against the Chrome WebMCP documentation, the WebMCP specification (Draft Community Group Report of 27 October 2026) and the webmachinelearning/webmcp repository as of 2 November 2026, then rewritten. The code was tested in Chromium 156.0.8078.4. The API the first edition teaches (document.modelContext.registerTool(), input schemas, execute, AbortSignal unregistration, annotations, the declarative form attributes) is unchanged. What changed is the guidance around it, the standards status and the ecosystem. See VALIDATION.md for every finding and its source.

Changed

  • The full text rewritten in the author's voice. Each chapter has an editorial log in editorial/ and a validation table in VALIDATION.md.
  • Chapter 1–3: Chrome's comparison page is now "When to use WebMCP and MCP" (27 October) and the quotes follow it. Chapter 3's demo runs on the current MCP SDK 2.4.0 and Inspector 2.13.0, and requestUserInteraction is shown next to the open requestUserInput() proposal (#204).
  • Chapter 4: the spec has four editors and is dated 27 October. Table 4.1 follows the rewritten comparison page. New section on the standards status in November 2026: the W3C TAG's early comment of 26 October and the proposed charter deliverable "Site Capabilities for Agents".
  • Chapter 5: checked against the 27 October draft (the API definitions are identical). The open result-serialization question (#361) is covered, and the advice to always return an object stays.
  • Chapter 6: Chrome's 30 October best practices (commit points, register tools all at once, wait for the UI, bind approval to the exact plan, idempotency) and the new §6.2 text on untrusted annotations.
  • Chapter 7 and 12: the same-origin section of the spec (§6.3.4, "Interaction with the Same-Origin Policy", merged 27 October) replaces the old "still a TODO" note, with the two-sided opt-in it defines.
  • Chapter 8: the explainer's toolcanceled event is now toolcancel, and the TAG comment on the declarative API is covered.
  • Chapter 9: the first app keeps one AbortController and unregisters every tool if one registration fails, as Chrome's "register tools all at once" rule recommends.
  • Chapter 10: Chrome's imperative-API page moved to use-webmcp-tool for React and added Vue (16 October). New "React: two hooks" section with Table 10.2, and a short Vue section.
  • Chapter 11 and 13: Chrome's new guidance on trust boundaries, stale workflow state and recomputing a plan on confirmation.
  • Chapter 14: Chrome's evals page, the Example Agentic Chrome Extension, chrome-devtools-mcp 1.12.0 and the time-travel and version-pinning tests from the build-tools page.
  • Chapter 15: browser and standards status as of 2 November 2026 (Chrome 156 Stable, Chrome 157 on 3 November, the origin trial, TPAC 2026, the permissions-policy discussion in #236).
  • Chapter 16 and 17: rebuilt on the rewritten comparison page and Chrome's 30 October guidance, with the late-October standards signals.
  • Appendices A–D: the API reference cites the 27 October draft and lists the open pull requests, the glossary adds use-webmcp-tool and "two-sided opt-in", the resources point to the new web edition, and the migration log runs to 2 November.
  • About the Author: co-author of two Chrome WebMCP documentation pages, member of the W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group, maintainer of the webmcp agent skill and of agentprose.
  • All 38 figures redrawn as SVG diagrams in the new palette.

Added

  • A new visual theme derived from the author's APM book (apm.isainative.dev) for the web edition, the PDF and the EPUB.
  • PDF (7 × 9.25 in, for Leanpub and KDP) and EPUB 3 editions built from the same manuscript as the web edition.
  • A release flow: tagged versions, GitHub Releases with the PDF, EPUB and HTML edition, and this release history.
  • Hosting on Azure Static Web Apps with Bicep templates and a one-command deploy (infra/deploy.sh), and a guide for the custom domain webmcp.salnikov.no.
  • The Leanpub sample is marked in the manuscript with {sample: true} (Part I, Chapter 1, Chapter 5 and About the Author).

Removed

  • The GitHub Pages site and its generator. The manuscript is now kept apart from the styling: manuscript/ is a clean, Leanpub-ready Markdown manuscript, theme/ holds the look and tools/ the build.

Version 1.0.0

2026-10-15

The first edition, as published on the web edition on GitHub Pages: 17 chapters in six parts and Appendices A–D, written against Chromium 156 with the WebMCPTesting feature and the WebMCP draft of 15 October 2026. This version was never tagged in Git; it is recorded here as the baseline for 2.0.0.