Tool variations

Endpoints listed in an OpenAPI document may lack clear summaries and descriptions that convey their intent and use. When a tool definition inherits an incomplete or vague description, LLMs may struggle to understand when to invoke the tool, how to use it properly, or how to interpret its output.

Improving tool descriptions is a form of prompt engineering, and it’s a critical step in building reliable, effective agents.

The platform provides two ways to improve a tool’s metadata:

• Editing the OpenAPI document and adding the x-gram extension to the endpoint to override or enrich the tool’s metadata.
• Editing a tool directly in the dashboard. This feature is called Tool variations.

A variation overrides a tool’s metadata without changing the underlying source. Beyond the name and description, variations can also override a tool’s tags, MCP annotations (title and the read-only, destructive, idempotent, and open-world hints), and confirmation prompts. Variations created in the dashboard are global: they apply to the tool everywhere it’s used, across every toolset and MCP server.

Editing a tool

Tools can be edited from the tool list on a source’s detail page (under Connect > Sources) or from the Tools tab of an MCP server (under Distribute > MCP).

To edit a tool’s name, click the 3 dots and select Edit name. Update the tool name in the modal that opens.

Similarly, to edit a tool’s description, click the 3 dots and select Edit description. Use the dedicated modal to validate and save the updated description:

Tags

The same menu supports adding or overriding a tool’s tags. Tags assigned here participate in tag-based tool filtering, which lets MCP clients connect to a focused subset of a server’s tools.

To edit a tool’s tags, click the 3 dots, select Edit tags, and update the tags in the modal that opens.

Tag variations take precedence over a tool’s source tags (from OpenAPI operations or Gram Functions). Setting tags through a variation replaces the source tags, and clearing them to an empty set removes the tool from every tag filter. For the full precedence rules, see tag-based tool filtering.