Tool Discovery

When Pando accumulates many tools (from MCP servers, Lua hooks, and built-in tools), the Tool Discovery system manages complexity by showing only a visible subset and providing on-demand search for the rest.

How It Works

Inspired by VS Code Copilot’s approach:

1. Core tools (bash, edit, view, glob, grep, write) are always visible
2. MCP and Lua tools are deferred by default
3. When the total tool count exceeds MaxDirectTools, the tool_search tool activates
4. The LLM searches the full registry by natural language
5. Discovered tools remain visible for the rest of the session

Configuration

[ToolDiscovery]
Enabled = true
Mode = 'auto'            # 'auto', 'always', or 'off'
MaxDirectTools = 64       # Threshold for auto mode
SearchLimit = 8           # Default results from tool_search
NonDeferredTools = []     # Tools always visible
DeferredSources = []      # Sources to defer (e.g. "mcp", "lua")

Modes

Tool Search

The LLM calls tool_search with a natural language query:

{
  "query": "search code in repository"
}

Results are ranked using term-frequency scoring over name, aliases, server name, description, and parameter names.

Source Filtering

Tools are categorized by source:

• core - Built-in tools (always visible)
• internal - Pando internal tools
• mcp - External MCP server tools
• lua - Lua hook tools
• mesnada - Orchestration tools
• rag - Knowledge base and code index tools
• gateway - MCP gateway re-exports