MCPServer(token_verifier=...) no longer requires auth=AuthSettings(...). A verifier on its own is now a plain bearer gate; AuthSettings is what you add to describe that gate to OAuth clients.

Motivation and Context

Closes #3283 (see also #431, #702).

Someone with a pre-shared token and no authorization server anywhere had to write AuthSettings(issuer_url=<something made up>, resource_server_url=...) just to get past the constructor, and the made-up issuer then got advertised in the RFC 9728 metadata document, which sends OAuth-capable clients off to discover an AS that doesn't exist. In resource-server-only mode issuer_url is never contacted; it's only echoed into that document. The TypeScript and Go SDKs both treat "verifier, metadata optional" as the primitive (requireBearerAuth({verifier}), RequireBearerToken(verifier, nil)); this brings the Python high-level API in line.

There was also a low-level inconsistency behind it: Server.streamable_http_app(token_verifier=V) with no auth= was accepted but built an app that 401'd every request, valid token included, because AuthenticationMiddleware(BearerAuthBackend) was installed under if auth: while RequireAuthMiddleware was installed under if token_verifier:. MCPServer refused the same shape with a ValueError, so the two layers disagreed about one state.

What changes:

• lowlevel.Server.streamable_http_app and MCPServer.sse_app: the authentication backend + auth-context middleware are installed whenever a verifier is present. auth layers on required scopes, the metadata route, and the resource_metadata pointer in the 401. Every previously-valid combination produces the same routes (same order), middleware and responses as before.
• MCPServer.__init__: a bare token_verifier= is accepted. Still refused: auth= with nothing to gate with, auth_server_provider= without auth= (it needs the issuer), and both a provider and a verifier.
• docs/run/authorization.md: new "Just a pre-shared token" section with a runnable docs_src example (constant-time compare, token from the environment, fails closed when unset), and the "always travel together" wording is corrected.

What this deliberately doesn't do:

• Split the resource-server fields out of AuthSettings (it still mixes embedded-AS config with RS discovery config). That's the principled follow-up and touches shipped 2.x surface; this change is a strict subset of it.
• Deduplicate the auth wiring between Server.streamable_http_app and MCPServer.sse_app.
• Change how a TokenVerifier that raises is surfaced (still a 500 from Starlette's AuthenticationMiddleware).
• At the low level, auth_server_provider without auth is still silently ignored, as before.

How Has This Been Tested?

• New docs tests for the pre-shared-token example (route list, exact 401 challenge, no metadata route, Client round trip with a static header), an interaction test for the low-level verifier-only shape, two sse_app tests (verifier-only, and verifier + settings), and constructor tests for the refused shapes. Three # pragma: no cover markers on the touched wiring/validation come off as a result; the embedded-AS-over-SSE branch keeps its pre-existing one.
• Driven end to end under uvicorn with curl and the SDK client over both streamable HTTP and SSE: no/wrong token → 401 without resource_metadata, metadata paths → 404, valid token → initialize 200 and whoami returns the verifier's client_id; non-ASCII and malformed Authorization headers → 401.
• ./scripts/test (100% coverage, strict-no-cover), ruff, pyright, and the strict docs build pass locally.

Breaking Changes

None. A constructor call that used to raise ValueError now succeeds; everything that worked before behaves identically. Two error messages are reworded (... without auth settings now names only auth_server_provider; ... when auth is enabled → ... with auth settings).

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
• Documentation update

Checklist

• I have read the MCP Documentation
• My code follows the repository's style guidelines
• New and existing tests pass locally
• I have added appropriate error handling
• I have added or updated documentation as needed

Additional context

The spec makes authorization OPTIONAL and only SHOULD for HTTP transports, and basic allows custom authentication strategies, so a pre-shared bearer with no metadata is outside the OAuth profile rather than in violation of it. The docs section says so in practical terms: with nothing to discover, the client has to arrive already holding the token.