Tool Registry
patternA catalog of capabilities available to AI agents — tools are discovered, validated, and invoked through the registry.
A tool registry is a centralized catalog that tells agents what tools are available, what they do, and how to use them. When an agent needs to take action, it consults the registry to find the right tool, validate its parameters, and invoke it.
Registries can be static (a fixed list of tool definitions) or dynamic (tools are discovered at runtime via protocols like MCP). Key design decisions include: what metadata each tool exposes, how tools are versioned, and how permissions are managed.
SUBCORP uses a native tool registry with 9 core tools — web search, file operations, content generation, and more. Each tool has a schema that the LLM uses for function calling. This focused registry replaced a system of 120 skill files, proving that fewer, well-designed tools outperform many specialized ones.