Tools
Tools are functions that agents can call during their ReAct loop. Synapse provides 10 native tools that run automatically alongside the backend — no setup required (except Docker for the sandbox tool).
Available tools
| Tool | Description | Requires |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | Execute Python in an isolated Docker container | Docker |
| Vault | Read and write persistent files | — |
| SQL | Query any SQLAlchemy-compatible database | DB config |
| Browser | Full Playwright browser automation | — |
| Web Scraper | Anti-bot evasion web scraping | — |
| Code Search | Semantic search over code repositories | Postgrers + PG Vector + repo indexed |
| PDF Parser | Extract text and tables from PDF URLs | — |
| Excel Parser | Parse .xlsx files | — |
| Collect Data | Generate dynamic input forms | — |
| Time | Natural language date/time parsing | — |
How tools work
Each tool is implemented as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that starts automatically when the backend starts. Agents communicate with tools through the MCP protocol — the same protocol used for external MCP servers like GitHub and Jira.
Assigning tools to agents
In the agent editor, set tools to:
["all"]— enable all available tools- A named list — e.g.
["browser_navigate", "vault_write", "sql_query"]
In orchestration steps, use allowed_tools to further narrow an agent's access for that specific step:
"allowed_tools": ["vault_read", "vault_write"]
Tool names
Tool names follow the format <server_name>_<tool_name>. The available tool names for each native server:
| Server | Tools |
|---|---|
| Vault | vault_read, vault_write, vault_patch, vault_list, vault_delete |
| SQL | sql_query, sql_list_tables, sql_describe_table |
| Browser | browser_navigate, browser_click, browser_fill, browser_screenshot, browser_extract |
| Sandbox | sandbox_execute |
| Web Scraper | scrape_url |
| Code Search | search_codebase |
| PDF Parser | parse_pdf |
| Excel Parser | parse_excel |
| Collect Data | collect_data |
| Time | get_time, parse_time |
To see all available tools including external MCP tools, go to Settings → Tools in the UI.
Custom tools
Beyond native tools, you can register REST API tools and Python tools as first-class agent tools. External MCP servers also expose their tools to agents automatically.