[Feat]: PushNotificationConfig.authentication is ignored; no Authorization header is sent in push notifications

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python

Research direction

Look at the BasePushNotificationSender class to understand how push notifications are dispatched. The issue is that the authentication field from PushNotificationConfig is ignored. Examine the configuration parsing and the _dispatch_notification method. The fix involves reading the authentication scheme and adding the appropriate Authorization header (e.g., Bearer) alongside the existing X-A2A-Notification-Token. Check for existing tests related to push notifications to understand the expected behavior and add tests for the new authentication header.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The A2A protocol spec states that when a client provides a PushNotificationConfig with an authentication scheme (e.g. "schemes": ["Bearer"]), the A2A server must authenticate when sending push notifications to the client’s webhook.
Example config:

"configuration": {
  "pushNotificationConfig": {
    "url": "CALLBACK-URL",
    "token": "secure-client-token-for-task-aaa",
    "authentication": {
      "schemes": ["Bearer"]
    }
  }
}

However, the Python implementation (BasePushNotificationSender) completely ignores authentication and sends no Authorization header.
It only attaches:

X-A2A-Notification-Token: <token>

This means that webhook endpoints cannot authenticate the caller and cannot follow the security model described in the spec.

This appears to be a spec compliance gap: push notification authentication is described by the protocol but not implemented in the Python server.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like the Python server to:

  • Honor PushNotificationConfig.authentication

  • Support at least the "Bearer" scheme

  • Automatically add the appropriate Authorization header

  • Match the spec examples by sending both:

    • X-A2A-Notification-Token
    • Authorization: Bearer <token_or_jwt>
Describe alternatives you've considered

As a workaround, we currently:

  • Subclass BasePushNotificationSender
  • Override _dispatch_notification
  • Inject our own Authorization: Bearer <jwt> header

This works, but:

  • It duplicates logic that should be part of the framework
  • It breaks consistency between Python and other A2A implementations
  • It makes spec-compliant webhook security non-standard and harder to maintain

A built-in implementation would make push notification authentication reliable, consistent, and aligned with the A2A spec.

Dominant language
Python
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Merged PRs (30d)
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