Tools Basics (MCP)

Goal: Connect agents to external systems and APIs through MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools.

Prerequisites

Complete memory-basics.md to understand agent state management.

What are MCP Tools?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) allows agents to:

• Execute shell commands
• Access file systems
• Call external APIs
• Connect to databases
• Interact with web services

MCP provides standardized tool integration across different providers.

1) Create a tool-enabled project

agentcli create tool-demo --template research-assistant
Set-Location tool-demo

This creates a project with common research tools pre-configured.

2) Configure MCP in agentflow.toml

[mcp]
enabled = true
enable_discovery = true

[[mcp.servers]]
name = "filesystem"
command = "mcp-server-filesystem"
args = ["--root", "./data"]

[[mcp.servers]]
name = "web"
command = "mcp-server-web"
args = ["--allowed-domains", "example.com,docs.company.com"]

Validate the configuration:

agentcli validate

Expected: Configuration validation passes without errors.

3) Inspect available servers and tools

agentcli mcp servers
agentcli mcp tools

Expected results:

• If MCP is not enabled: "MCP manager not configured"
• After enabling MCP: Lists show configured servers and available tools

4) Test tool functionality

Create test data:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path "data" -Force
"Hello from AgenticGoKit MCP!" | Out-File -FilePath "data/sample.txt"

Run agent with tool request:

go run . -m "Read the contents of data/sample.txt using available tools"

Expected: Agent uses MCP filesystem tool to read and return file contents.

5) Monitor tool usage with tracing

agentcli trace start
go run . -m "List files in the data directory"
agentcli trace stop

This captures detailed logs of MCP tool invocations and responses.

6) Health monitoring and debugging

agentcli mcp health
agentcli mcp info --server filesystem

These commands help diagnose MCP server connectivity and capability issues.

Common MCP Server Types

Server	Purpose	Command
filesystem	File operations	mcp-server-filesystem
web	Web scraping	mcp-server-web
postgres	Database access	mcp-server-postgres
github	GitHub API	mcp-server-github

Notes

• MCP servers are external processes that need separate installation
• Configure server permissions carefully for security
• Use agentcli trace to observe tool usage during agent runs
• Server startup may take a few seconds before tools become available

Next Steps

• Learn deployment strategies: deploy-basics.md
• Explore advanced MCP configuration in the MCP Guide

Verification checklist

• [ ] Research-assistant template project created
• [ ] agentcli validate passed with MCP configuration
• [ ] agentcli mcp servers listed configured servers
• [ ] agentcli mcp tools showed available tools
• [ ] Agent successfully used filesystem tool to read file
• [ ] MCP health check completed without errors