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Portkey ships certain new gateway capabilities as opt-in beta features before they are promoted to stable APIs. To activate a beta feature, include the x-portkey-beta header (or the equivalent SDK parameter) in your request with the feature’s version string. 
x-portkey-beta: <feature-version-string>
To enable multiple beta features at once, pass a comma-separated list: 
x-portkey-beta: feature-one-2026-01-01, feature-two-2026-06-01
Once a feature is promoted to stable, the header becomes a no-op and can be safely removed.

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Currently Available Beta Features

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Server-Side MCP Execution

Header value: server-side-mcp-2026-06-01 Enables Portkey to fetch and execute MCP tools on your behalf — directly inside the gateway — rather than delegating execution to the upstream provider. This is required whenever you use the @portkey-mcp prefix in the Responses API or Messages API. When to use it
  • You are routing through a provider that does not natively support remote MCP tool execution (e.g. AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI).
  • You want MCP credentials and tool invocations to stay within your own VPC and never touch provider infrastructure.
  • You need per-user attribution, audit logs, and full observability over every MCP tool call.
How to send the header 
curl https://api.portkey.ai/v1/responses \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-portkey-api-key: $PORTKEY_API_KEY" \
  -H "x-portkey-beta: server-side-mcp-2026-06-01" \
  -d '{
    "model": "@your-provider-slug/your-model",
    "tools": [
      {
        "type": "mcp",
        "server_label": "@portkey-mcp/your-mcp-server-label"
      }
    ],
    "input": "your prompt here"
  }'
See the full Remote MCP guide for complete request examples, authentication options, and a comparison of Portkey-side vs provider-side MCP execution.

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SDK Parameter Reference

The x-portkey-beta HTTP header maps to the following SDK parameters:
SDKParameter name
Portkey Node SDKportkeyBeta
Portkey Python SDKportkey_beta
OpenAI Node SDK (via createHeaders)portkeyBeta
OpenAI Python SDK (via createHeaders)portkey_beta
cURL / raw HTTPx-portkey-beta header
Beta features may change before they are promoted to stable. Breaking changes within the same beta version string will not be made, but the stable API may look different. Check the changelog for updates.
Last modified on July 1, 2026