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Tools

Tools are the capabilities that allow Unpage agents to interact with your infrastructure and perform useful operations. They form the bridge between large language models (LLMs) and real-world systems, enabling AI to take meaningful actions based on its analysis.

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What are Tools?

In Unpage, tools are:
  1. Function interfaces that LLMs can call with specific parameters
  2. Task-specific capabilities provided by plugins
  3. Permission-controlled actions that can query or modify infrastructure
  4. Structured interfaces with defined inputs and outputs
Tools follow the FastMCP protocol, which enables structured interaction between LLMs and external systems while maintaining appropriate security boundaries.

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Tool Categories

Unpage provides tools across several categories, each serving different operational needs:

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Infrastructure Query Tools

These tools allow agents to gather information about your infrastructure:
  • Resource discovery: Find resources matching specific criteria
  • Resource details: Get comprehensive information about specific resources
  • Relationship exploration: Understand connections between resources
  • Configuration inspection: Examine settings and properties
Example: aws_describe_ec2_instance, kubernetes_get_pod_details

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Metrics and Monitoring Tools

These tools provide access to operational data:
  • Metrics retrieval: Get time-series data about resource performance
  • Metrics exploration: Discover available metrics for resources
  • Anomaly detection: Identify unusual patterns in metrics
  • Alert status: Check on the current state of alerts
Example: metrics_get_metrics_for_node, datadog_get_monitor_status

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Log Analysis Tools

These tools enable investigation of log data:
  • Log search: Find relevant log entries across systems
  • Log filtering: Narrow down log results by time or content
  • Pattern analysis: Identify recurring patterns in logs
  • Error extraction: Focus on error and warning messages
Example: solarwinds_search_logs, datadog_search_logs

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Network Diagnostic Tools

These tools help troubleshoot connectivity issues:
  • Connectivity checks: Verify network paths are working
  • DNS lookups: Resolve hostnames to IP addresses
  • Route tracing: Examine network paths between resources
  • HTTP requests: Test web endpoints
Example: networking_ping, networking_traceroute

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Utility Tools

These tools provide general-purpose functionality:
  • Date/time operations: Handle timezone conversions and formatting
  • Calculations: Perform mathematical operations
  • Text processing: Format and manipulate strings
  • Data conversion: Transform between different data formats
Example: core_current_datetime, core_convert_to_timezone

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Action Tools

These tools can modify state or take actions:
  • Status updates: Post updates to incident management systems
  • Resource operations: Start, stop, or modify resources
  • Configuration changes: Update settings or configurations
  • Alerts management: Acknowledge or resolve alerts
Example: pagerduty_post_status_update, aws_restart_ec2_instance

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How Tools Work

Tools operate through a structured mechanism:
  1. Registration: Plugins register tools with the MCP server during startup
  2. Discovery: Agents discover available tools through the MCP protocol
  3. Invocation: Agents call tools with specific parameters
  4. Execution: The plugin executes the requested action
  5. Response: Results are returned to the agent for further analysis

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Tool Access Control

Tools implement a permission model that ensures agents only have access to the capabilities they need:

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Agent-Level Access

In each agent’s YAML configuration, the tools section explicitly grants permission to use specific tools: 
tools:
  - "core_current_datetime"
  - "metrics_get_metrics_for_node"
  - "graph_get_resource_details"
  - "solarwinds_search_logs"
You can use wildcards and patterns to grant access to groups of tools: 
tools:
  # Allow all metrics tools
  - "metrics_*"
  # Allow all tools except those that modify resources
  - "/^(?!.*_modify_|.*_delete_|.*_create_).*$/"

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Plugin-Level Access

Plugins may implement additional access controls based on:
  • Authentication to external services
  • User roles and permissions
  • Resource-specific access control
  • Rate limiting and quotas

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Using Tools Directly

You can use tools directly from the command line without going through an LLM, which is useful for:

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Debugging

Test tools and understand their behavior: 
# Test a tool with specific parameters
unpage mcp tools call metrics_get_metrics_for_node --node-id i-0abc123def456 --metric cpu_utilization

# See detailed output structure
unpage mcp tools call graph_get_resource_details --resource-id i-0abc123def456 | jq

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Automation

Use tools in scripts and automation workflows: 
# Use in a script to get current CPU usage
CPU_USAGE=$(unpage mcp tools call metrics_get_metrics_for_node --node-id i-0abc123def456 --metric cpu_utilization --last 5m | jq '.avg')

# Check if CPU usage is above threshold
if (( $(echo "$CPU_USAGE > 80" | bc -l) )); then
  echo "High CPU usage detected!"
fi

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Development

Understand available tools when creating new agents: 
# List all available tools
unpage mcp tools list

# List tools matching a pattern
unpage mcp tools list | grep aws_

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Tool Schema

Each tool has a defined schema that specifies:
  • Name: Unique identifier for the tool
  • Description: Human-readable explanation of what the tool does
  • Parameters: Required and optional inputs with types and constraints
  • Return Type: Structure and format of the returned data
For example, a metrics tool might have this schema: 
{
  "name": "metrics_get_metrics_for_node",
  "description": "Get metrics data for a specific node",
  "parameters": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "node_id": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "ID of the node to get metrics for"
      },
      "metric": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "Name of the metric to retrieve"
      },
      "start_time": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "ISO8601 timestamp for start of range"
      },
      "end_time": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "ISO8601 timestamp for end of range"
      },
      "aggregation": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": ["avg", "max", "min", "sum"],
        "default": "avg",
        "description": "Aggregation function to use"
      }
    },
    "required": ["node_id", "metric"]
  },
  "returns": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "datapoints": {
        "type": "array",
        "items": {
          "type": "object",
          "properties": {
            "timestamp": {
              "type": "string",
              "format": "date-time"
            },
            "value": {
              "type": "number"
            }
          }
        }
      },
      "min": {"type": "number"},
      "max": {"type": "number"},
      "avg": {"type": "number"}
    }
  }
}

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Best Practices

To get the most value from tools:
  1. Follow least privilege: Grant agents access only to the tools they need
  2. Test tools independently: Use unpage mcp tools call to understand behavior
  3. Use structured parameters: Provide complete parameter objects
  4. Handle errors gracefully: Account for potential tool failures in agent prompts
  5. Chain tool calls: Build complex workflows by combining multiple tool calls

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Conclusion

Tools are what make Unpage agents truly useful by enabling them to interact with your actual infrastructure. By providing a secure, structured interface for LLMs to access and manipulate systems, tools bridge the gap between AI understanding and real-world operations. For more information on the specific tools available from each plugin, refer to the individual plugin documentation.
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