Available MCP Tools

Portal ships with the following built-in MCP tools, registered through the Actions Registry and automatically available to any connected AI agent.

Built-in tools

Tool	Description
search	Search for information across company internal systems, documentation, and software catalogs.
query-semantic-search-engine	Perform semantic (meaning-based) search across indexed knowledge sources.
get-catalog-entity	Retrieve detailed information about a specific entity in the software catalog.
get-datasets-by-registry-ids	Fetch datasets from the data registry using their IDs.
get-dbt-project-by-registry-id	Fetch a dbt project from the data registry using its ID.
get-entity-overlay	Retrieve overlay metadata for a given entity in the software catalog.

These tools are read-only and available to all authenticated users.

For detailed information about how AiKA uses the search tools, see Searching for Information.

How agents use these tools

When you ask an AI agent a question that requires Portal data, the agent automatically selects the appropriate tool. For example:

• "What is the payments-gateway service?" — the agent calls get-catalog-entity to retrieve entity details from the catalog.
• "Find documentation about our authentication flow" — the agent calls query-semantic-search-engine to search across indexed knowledge sources.
• "What overlay metadata is set on the checkout service?" — the agent calls get-entity-overlay to retrieve overlay data.

You don't need to know the tool names — the agent selects the right tool based on your question.

Configuring which tools are available

Portal exposes tools from plugins listed in the backend.actions.pluginSources configuration. To include tools from additional plugins, add the plugin ID to this list:

app-config.yaml

backend:
  actions:
    pluginSources:
      - catalog
      - soundcheck
      - scaffolder

Only tools from listed plugins are exposed. See Registering Tools for how plugin developers add new tools to the registry.