Tools & Automation

A standard LLM is limited to text generation. By adding Tools, you give your agent the ability to interact with the world: search the internet, browse live websites, execute code, or call external APIs.

OpenAgent supports three primary ways to extend an agent's capabilities.

Built-in Tools

Built-in tool implementations are pre-packaged with OpenAgent. Create Tool records for the capabilities you want, configure any credentials on those records, then attach the records to a Store.

Example: "Search the latest news about OpenAgent and summarize it."

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

OpenAgent supports MCP, an open standard for connecting AI models to external data and tools. This is the recommended way to connect your own databases or APIs.

Skills and Marketplace

Skills are reusable instruction packages that teach an agent how to perform a specific task or operate a tool. OpenAgent loads skills from the local skills folder during startup and can install skills from the Skill Marketplace. After a skill is available, attach it to a Store through the Store's Skills field.

Enabled Skills are exposed to the agent as a catalog plus a load_skill tool. This lets the agent load full Skill instructions only when a task needs them, instead of injecting every Skill into every prompt.

Stores can also enable Experience Review to learn from completed tool-heavy tasks. When a task produces a reusable workflow, OpenAgent can create a new Skill or update an existing one for future runs.

Built-in Skills are synchronized at startup from OpenAgent's bundled or local skills folder. A built-in Skill with the same name is replaced by the bundled version on restart, so customize workflows by creating separate custom Skills instead of editing bundled built-ins in place.

Which one should I choose?

Next Steps