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Tools are the actions an agent can take inside your workspace. Every tool is enabled by default. Disabling tools you don’t need makes the agent faster, cheaper, and more accurate—the fewer options an agent has, the less likely it is to pick the wrong one.

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Why scope tools

Agents choose which tool to call based on the instructions and the current state of the run. When five tools could plausibly satisfy a step, the agent has to reason about which one fits. When only one tool applies, there’s nothing to get wrong. The pattern to follow: enable exactly what the agent needs, disable everything else. An agent that writes a weekly summary doc doesn’t need channel tools, workspace tools, or the ability to create other agents. Turning those off doesn’t reduce what the agent can do—it improves how reliably it does the thing you actually want.

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Projects

Actions for working with research projects, the data inside them, and the tags applied to that data. Example scoping An agent that is instructed to highlight key words or sentiment does not need Create tag tool toggled. Only Create highlight needs to be configured on.

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Docs

Actions for creating and editing docs (which double as insights in Dovetail). Example scoping A weekly digest agent needs Create doc only. Turn off update, delete, and comment tools so it can’t accidentally overwrite last week’s digest.

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Channels

Actions for working with Channels—the always-on ingestion layer. Side effects to know Deleting a channel removes every data point inside it. Deleted channels and their contents are recoverable—contact support if you need to restore one. Example scoping A support triage agent that reads from a channel and adds tags doesn’t need any Channel tools enabled—reading is implicit, and it isn’t creating or modifying the channel itself.

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Workspace

Actions for working with folders, contacts, and custom fields. Side effects to know Folders can only be deleted when empty. Move or delete their contents first. Deleting a custom field removes that field’s values from every record that had it—this action is not recoverable.

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Agents

A single meta-capability: create new agents.

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Combining tools

Some agents need tools from more than one category. A few common combinations:
  • Digest agent—Docs: Create doc. Everything else off.
  • Tagger—Projects: apply existing tags only. Everything else off.
  • Interview intake—Projects: Add data, Attach audio or video. Workspace: Create contact. Everything else off.
  • Triage and route—Projects: Create highlight, apply tags. Docs: Add comment. Everything else off.
Start narrow. Add a tool only when the agent tells you it needs one—if a run fails because a required action isn’t available, you’ll see it immediately and can enable exactly what’s missing.