Use agt from MCP clients

agt serve exposes agt's tools over MCP stdio, so any MCP client (an editor, a desktop assistant, or another agent framework) can manage resources and take part in conversations.

Configure the client

Most clients accept an mcpServers entry:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agt": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/agt",
      "args": ["serve", "--principal", "me", "--manager"]
    }
  }
}

• --principal sets the identity the client acts as. It must already exist (agt im principal create me --name Me). The model cannot change it through tool arguments.
• --manager adds the resource and binding tools. Leave it out to give the client only the participant tools.
• Add --home <dir> before serve to use a home other than $AGT_HOME or ~/.agt.

What the client can do

Without --manager, the client gets the participant tools: conversations, messages, memory and its own tasks. With --manager it also gets resources, identities and bindings. The Tool service module has the full list.

agt tool list --principal me --manager prints every tool with its parameters.

Things to know

• agt serve does not run agents. Messages sent through it are stored and delivered, but agents only reply when a discussion is authorized and the scheduler is running. Start discussions from the Web console or with agt schedule start, and keep the console or agt schedule run --watch running.
• Trust. Whoever starts agt serve chooses the identity and whether it is a manager. Treat it like a local admin tool.
• Same rules as agents. Deletions return a plan first and need an exact confirmation, and secrets are never returned.

Calling tools from scripts

The same tools are available without an MCP client:

agt tool list --principal me --manager
agt tool call --principal me --manager resource_list --args '{"kind":"agent"}'
agt --output json tool call --principal me message_history --args '{"conversation":"<id>"}'

To react to changes, agt events watch --principal me prints a JSON line whenever something the identity can see changes, such as a new message or a task update.