Tools & Runners

While Agents provide the intelligence, Tools provide the capabilities. In Red Station, tools are executable actions that agents can invoke.

Tool Categories

1. MCP Tools: Granular functions provided by the Matrix (MCP), such as read_file, git_commit, or linear_create_issue.
2. Runners: Specialized command execution strategies for build, test, and lint tasks.
3. Scripts: Ad-hoc shell scripts.

Runners

Runners are "Smart Tools" that attempt to auto-detect the best way to run a command in your project.

• Test Runner: Detects jest, pytest, cargo test, etc., and runs the suite.
• Lint Runner: Detects eslint, black, rubocop, etc.
• Build Runner: Detects npm build, make, cargo build.

CLI Commands

# List all registered tools
pilot tools list

# Test a specific tool configuration
pilot tools test lint

Configuration (tools.yaml)

Defined in ~/.pilot/tools.yaml.

runners:
  test:
    type: test
    auto_detect: true
    coverage: true
    
  lint:
    type: lint
    auto_detect: true

Adding New Tools (No-Code/Low-Code)

You don't need access to the platform source code to add new capabilities.

1. External MCP Servers (Recommended)

Red Station supports the open Model Context Protocol. You can connect to any standard MCP server (e.g., for GitHub, Slack, Postgres, or Google Drive) simply by editing ~/.pilot/mcp.yaml.

Example: Connecting GitHub (via Node.js)

# ~/.pilot/mcp.yaml
servers:
  github:
    command: npx
    args: ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"]
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}
    enabled: true

No code needed. Just config.

2. Script Tools

You can wrap any shell script or binary as a tool using ~/.pilot/tools.yaml.

Example: Custom Deploy Script

# ~/.pilot/tools.yaml
tools:
  deploy-staging:
    type: script
    command: "./scripts/deploy.sh"
    args: ["staging"]
    description: "Deploy current branch to staging"
    enabled: true

Agents will now see a deploy-staging tool and can invoke it autonomously.