Tool groups

MCP Gateway lets you organize tools from multiple servers into reusable collections called tool groups. Instead of assigning tools service by service, you can create cross-server groups and reuse them across multiple agents.

A tool group is a named collection of tools from any of your connected servers. Tool groups let you scope an agent's access to a specific set of tools based on the workflow it needs to perform, instead of giving it access to everything.

You can design Tool Groups around purpose, not platform. For example, you can create the following tool groups:

• Testing: Tool group for QA, sandbox environments, and automated checks.
• Development: Tool group for deployments, PR management, and issue tracking.
• Communication: Tool group for posting updates, fetching messages, or syncing notes.

After creating tool groups, you can toggle groups for agents in the Agent Access Control dialog box, without needing to disconnect or reconnect entire services.

Why use tool groups

Without tool groups, you can end up exposing large numbers of tools to your agent. This can lead to lower accuracy and wasted context tokens, because the model must receive each tool's name and description. Additionally, some agents have limits to how many tools they can connect to simultaneously.

Tool groups solve this by:

• Reducing context load by surfacing only relevant tools to the LLM, which minimizes token usage.

• Improving accuracy because fewer, more well-scoped tools help the model make more confident and correct calls.

• Keeping access consistent across environments and use cases.

• Reducing excessive agency by ensuring each agent only sees the tools it actually needs.

Tool groups allow for flexible role-based setups, such as:

• Developer: Access to Development and Testing groups.
• Customer success: Access to Communication and CRM groups.
• Marketing: Access to read-only data tools across several servers.

Creating a tool group

You can create a tool group directly from the Tool Catalog in MCP Gateway user interface.

1. In the MCP Gateway user interface, go to Tool Catalog.
2. Click New Tool Group.
3. Select the tools you want to include in your tool group from the available servers.
4. Give your group a clear name that reflects its purpose.
5. Save the group to control agent access.

Your new group immediately becomes available.

Best practices to create tool groups

• Group by intent: For example, read/write for better clarity.
• Use naming conventions that reflect the group's purpose and service.
• Review regularly to ensure agents have access only to what they need.