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Tools in Elastic Agent Builder

Agents use tools to search, retrieve, and take actions on your behalf.

Tools can be thought of as functions: modular, reusable actions that agents can call to interact with your Elasticsearch data.

Tools enable agents to work with Elasticsearch data. When an agent receives a natural language query, it does the following:

  1. Analyzes the semantic intent of the request
  2. Selects appropriate tools from its available toolset
  3. Maps the request parameters to tool input parameters
  4. Executes the tools in sequence as needed
  5. Processes the structured output data

Each tool is an atomic operation with a defined signature. Tools accept typed parameters and return structured results in a format the agent can parse, transform, and incorporate into its response generation.

Note

Tool execution and result processing consume tokens. To understand how usage is calculated, refer to Token usage in Elastic Agent Builder.

Elastic Agent Builder ships with a comprehensive set of built-in tools that provide core capabilities for working with your Elasticsearch data. These tools are ready to use. They cannot be modified or deleted.

Built-in tools serve as building blocks for more complex interactions and provide the foundation for agent capabilities.

For the complete list, refer to Built-in tools reference.

You can extend the built-in tool catalog with your own custom tool definitions. To learn how to create and manage custom tools, refer to Custom tools.

You can view, organize, and manage tools from the Tools page in Kibana or programmatically using the Tools API.

The Tools page lists each tool by ID and description. Use the search bar or filter by labels to find specific tools. Built-in tools are marked with a lock icon (🔒).

Tools landing page showing the list of available tools with their descriptions and actions

Custom tools can be modified or removed as needed:

  1. From the Tools page, find the tool you want to modify.
  2. Select the edit icon to update the tool or the delete icon to remove it.
  3. For updates, modify the tool properties and save your changes.
Note

Built-in tools cannot be modified or deleted.

For a quick overview of how to work programmatically with tools, refer to Tools API.

For the complete API reference, refer to the Kibana API reference.

Tools can also be accessed through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which provides a standardized interface for external clients to use Agent Builder tools.

The Tools UI provides a Copy your MCP server URL button for easy access.

Copy MCP server URL button for easy configuration of external clients
Important

There is a known issue with the copy button in 9.2.

For detailed MCP server configuration, refer to MCP server.