MCP Tools Reference

Your AI assistant calls these tools automatically. This reference is useful for understanding what's available, debugging, or writing custom strategies.

Tool Discovery: Engrams provides 42 optimized MCP tools. Your AI assistant discovers them automatically via the MCP protocol.

Core Context

Tool	Description
`get_product_context`	Retrieve the project's product context document
`update_product_context`	Overwrite or patch the product context
`get_active_context`	Retrieve the current active context document
`update_active_context`	Overwrite or patch the active context
`get_item_history`	Retrieve version history for product or active context

Decisions

Tool	Description
`log_decision`	Record a new decision with summary, rationale, and tags
`get_decisions`	List decisions with optional tag and limit filters
`search_decisions_fts`	Full-text search across decision fields

Progress

Tool	Description
`log_progress`	Create a new progress/task entry
`get_progress`	List progress entries with optional status and parent filters
`update_progress`	Update the status or description of an existing entry

System Patterns

Tool	Description
`log_system_pattern`	Document a new architectural or design pattern
`get_system_patterns`	List patterns with optional tag filters

Custom Data

Tool	Description
`log_custom_data`	Store arbitrary category/key/value data
`get_custom_data`	Retrieve custom data by category and key
`search_custom_data_value_fts`	Full-text search across custom data values

Relationships

Tool	Description
`link_engrams_items`	Create a typed relationship between two items
`get_linked_items`	Retrieve all items linked to a given item

Governance

Tool	Description
`tool_check_planned_action`	Pre-mutation check: verify a planned action against all accepted team decisions before any workspace changes. Returns `blocked=true` if the action conflicts.
`create_scope`	Create a governance scope (team or individual)
`get_scopes`	List all scopes
`log_governance_rule`	Log a governance rule within a scope
`get_governance_rules`	Retrieve governance rules
`check_compliance`	Post-write check: verify an existing item against all applicable scope rules
`get_scope_amendments`	List amendment proposals
`review_amendment`	Approve or reject an amendment
`get_effective_context`	Merged team + individual context for a scope

Codebase Bindings

Tool	Description
`bind_code_to_item`	Bind a glob path pattern to a decision or pattern
`get_bindings_for_item`	List all bindings for an item
`get_context_for_files`	Retrieve all context bound to given file paths
`verify_bindings`	Check binding health: filesystem scan (mode='full') or staleness check (mode='staleness')
`suggest_bindings`	Auto-propose bindings based on pattern analysis
`unbind_code_from_item`	Remove a binding by ID

Search

Tool	Description
`semantic_search_engrams`	Natural-language conceptual search across all entity types using vector embeddings. Filter by item types, tags, or categories.
`search_decisions_fts`	Keyword search across decision text (also listed under Decisions)
`search_custom_data_value_fts`	Keyword search across custom data (also listed under Custom Data)

Context Budgeting

Tool	Description
`get_relevant_context`	Retrieve scored, budget-aware context for a query (set `dry_run=True` to preview token estimates)
`manage_budget_config`	View or update scoring weights (omit weights to read, provide to update)

Onboarding

Tool	Description
`get_project_briefing`	Generate a project briefing (set `staleness_only=True` to check freshness, pass a single section in `sections` to drill down)

Utilities

Tool	Description
`get_recent_activity_summary`	Summary of recent database activity
`export_engrams_to_markdown`	Export all knowledge to markdown files
`import_markdown_to_engrams`	Import knowledge from a markdown export directory
`batch_log_items`	Log multiple items of the same type in one call
`delete_item`	Permanently delete any Engrams item by type and ID (or category+key for custom data)