A stdio MCP server is about to exit. Its stdin just reached EOF. What — MCP Professional Practice — Claude Cert Academy

A stdio MCP server is about to exit. Its stdin just reached EOF. What is the correct shutdown behavior?

• Call process.exit(0) immediately
• Finish all in-flight requests, then exit cleanly
• Send a shutdown notification to the client
• Close the output stream and wait for the client to acknowledge

Answer: Finish all in-flight requests, then exit cleanly

EOF on stdin is the shutdown signal in stdio transport. The server should treat it as a graceful shutdown request: finish all in-flight requests, then exit. Calling process.exit() immediately would abandon in-flight operations and leave the client unable to know whether they completed.

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