Tools - Deco CMS

Two kinds of tools

Decopilot has access to two kinds of tools:

Built-in tools — always available, used for managing work, delegating tasks, and reading context. The same regardless of scope.

Scope tools — come from the connections attached in your current scope. At org scope, that’s your org-wide built-ins. At agent scope, it’s the tools attached to the open agent.

Built-in tools

Tool	Available in subtasks	What it does
`subtask`	No	Start a subtask, optionally with a specific agent
`user_ask`	No	Ask you a question when it needs input
`enable_tool`	Yes	Activate a scope tool so it can be called next step
`read_resource`	Yes	Read documentation or guidelines from the current scope
`read_prompt`	Yes	Read a reusable prompt template
`read_tool_output`	Yes	Re-read a large tool result that was offloaded to storage
`web_search`	Yes	Run a deep web research pass and stream the result (requires a web-research model)
`generate_image`	Yes	Generate an image with the configured image model
`propose_plan`	No	Propose a plan for approval (only registered in plan mode)

Subtasks have restricted access — they can’t start additional subtasks or ask you questions, since they’re meant to run and report back without interruption.

Sandbox-backed agents get VM tools

When an agent has a sandbox (a linked GitHub repo, see Agents), decopilot is also given six VM tools that operate inside that sandbox:

Tool	What it does
`bash`	Runs a shell command in the sandbox
`read`	Reads a file from the sandbox
`write`	Writes a file in the sandbox
`edit`	Applies a targeted edit to an existing file
`grep`	Searches file contents with ripgrep
`glob`	Lists files matching a path pattern

These tools are provisioned lazily — the sandbox only starts on the first VM-tool call.

Scope tools

Scope tools are the domain-specific capabilities tied to your current context. Open an agent and you’ll get the tools attached to that agent — Shopify tools if the agent has the Shopify connection, shipping tools if it has ShipStation, and so on.

Example: An order-fulfillment agent might expose:

GET_ORDERS — fetch customer orders
UPDATE_INVENTORY — update stock levels
CREATE_SHIPPING_LABEL — generate shipping labels
GET_PRODUCTS — list the product catalog

Which tools are available depends on the connections attached to the current agent. See Agents for how to curate this.

How decopilot uses tools

Decopilot starts each task with only its built-in tools. It sees scope tools listed in its instructions and uses them as needed to complete your request.

For complex work, it can delegate to a subtask (using subtask ) or load additional context first (using read_resource or read_prompt ) before acting.

Next: See Context and tasks to understand how decopilot manages memory.

For the full technical reference, see Built-in Tools.