StackJack Platform Tools (stackjack_*)
Alongside connector tools, StackJack serves platform tools under the stackjack_ prefix. They need no connector at all — a freshly created tenant with zero connectors configured can call the baseline…
Written By Christopher Scaminaci
Last updated About 22 hours ago
Alongside connector tools, StackJack serves platform tools under the stackjack_ prefix. They need no connector at all — a freshly created tenant with zero connectors configured can call the baseline tools. They are the "getting started" and self-service surface for any connected harness: session diagnostics, platform status, live documentation, support tickets, automation control and building, and — when catalog mode is enabled — on-demand tool discovery.
Most of them are on by default. Diagnostic and live-documentation tools are served to every connected harness automatically. Interactive MCP clients also receive all four support-ticket tools automatically. An Automation's dedicated MCP client keeps the two support reads but must opt into the two support writes, as explained below. A restricted tool selection does not otherwise hide these baseline tools. The remaining exceptions to "always on" are:
- The billed
stackjack_run_agentaction, the two agent-config reads, and the automation authoring/lifecycle tools require an explicit per-client grant plus the Agentic Orchestration feature. Details in Automation tools below. - The five catalog feature tools appear only when catalog machinery is active for that connection. Full and compact modes list the four direct discovery/dispatch tools; minimal also lists the folded
stackjack_platformrouter. The two catalog-mode switch tools (stackjack_get_catalog_mode/stackjack_set_catalog_mode) are the deliberate exception: they are visible in every mode, and even when catalog modes are switched off — an escape hatch you can only see once you have already escaped would be no help.
Everything else on this page is available without being selected, subject to the Automation support-ticket guardrail below.
The always-available diagnostic set
The diagnostic tools below are visible to every connected client — they can't be deselected, because they change nothing in StackJack or your connected products and exist so any harness can diagnose itself. All except stackjack_refresh_tool_list are flagged read-only in their MCP metadata. Refresh retains its action classification; it only reports the version and refresh instructions, and it mutates no tenant or connector data.
Checking your remaining call allowance
Every connector subscription carries a monthly tool-call limit that resets on that connector's own billing cycle. Once it is reached, further calls to that connector are refused with a monthly_limit_exceeded error until the cycle resets.
stackjack_get_quota_status lets a harness see that coming. It is worth calling before a large batch of work, and again after any monthly_limit_exceeded refusal to see which other connectors are close. It reports one row per subscribed connector:
The response also opens with a summary, so a harness need not scan every row:
When usage cannot be read, the reason code says what to do about it:
Three things worth knowing:
- Each connector has its own cycle. The counters and reset dates are per connector, not one shared monthly pool — a
periodResetUtcnext Tuesday on one connector says nothing about another. - Counts are as of the moment you ask. The figure does not include the call you are making right now.
- A
nullcount means unknown, never zero. StackJack will not guess a usage figure it could not read; that is the one wrong answer a pre-wall warning must not give.
The rows cover every connector you are subscribed to, which is slightly wider than the connector list stackjack_session_info reports — that one lists what is usable on the current connection, while an allowance exists whether or not credentials happen to be loaded. The extra rows always carry a usageUnavailableReason saying which case they are.
The same warning also arrives without being asked for. When a connector tool call is served while that connector is at or above the threshold, StackJack attaches a small stackjack.quota note to the result's protocol metadata (_meta). Adding that note does not change the response body — it rides beside the answer rather than inside it, so a harness that ignores _meta sees no difference at all. Two other things can change a body, and neither is this one: a documented adapter for file downloads and non-JSON vendor protocols, and an enabled response-shaping rule. See What a tool call returns. Harness support for surfacing metadata varies; treat the note as a bonus, and stackjack_get_quota_status as the reliable way to check.
The same numbers appear in the portal on the Connectors page, where each connected card carries a usage bar that turns amber at the same 80% point and red once the limit is reached.
To raise a limit, contact your StackJack administrator or support.
The "pending approval" signal
If a team member connects before an admin has assigned them any tools, stackjack_session_info returns a special pending_approval response telling the AI (and the user) that the connection works but an admin needs to approve them on the Team page and assign tool permissions. If a teammate reports "it connects but nothing works," ask them to run this tool first.
Live documentation tools (always available)
The live-documentation tools below let a harness read StackJack's own product documentation and browse the tool catalog on demand — so the AI can answer "how do I connect Halo?" or look up a tool's schema without leaving the conversation. Like the diagnostic set, they are served to every connected client automatically and are never plan-gated.
Support ticket tools
Four tools let a harness open and follow up on StackJack support tickets. For interactive MCP clients, all four are automatic: they do not need to be selected, and a restricted tool selection does not hide them.
Automation clients use a stricter policy. stackjack_list_support_tickets and stackjack_get_support_ticket remain available, but stackjack_create_support_ticket and stackjack_add_support_ticket_message are deny-by-default. To let an Automation open or reply to tickets, enable Allow this agent to raise a StackJack support ticket for errors under its Guardrails. When that toggle is off, the two write tools are hidden from the agent's discovery response and refused if called directly; this is enforced separately from the normal tool selector.
When a connector execution routed through StackJack's shared gateway fails with one of the 14 support-worthy error types, its response can include a prefilled ticket draft and a next action that tells the harness to ask before calling stackjack_create_support_ticket (details). Bad requests, validation failures, not-found responses, rate limits, and ordinary access or billing refusals deliberately do not receive a draft.
Ticket creation commits the ticket first, then attempts the system diagnostic bundle and sanitized MCP-log upload as two independent best-effort steps. The response reports diagnosticsAttached: true when at least one succeeds; the ticket still exists when both fail. For an Automation, the separate diagnostic-payload guardrail controls whether the system bundle can include tenant identity detail. Interactive clients receive the full bundle.
The anti-flood controls have distinct windows:
- Every create attempt first consumes a counter capped at 30 per tenant per hour, before any duplicate check runs — so an attempt answered with an existing ticket still spends one.
- Interactive duplicates are looked up over 15 minutes by tenant, harness source, source tool, and error type; a match returns the existing open ticket.
- Automation duplicates are looked up over 24 hours and also include the raising Automation. A match appends an occurrence note to the existing ticket instead of opening a second one.
- New Automation-raised tickets are capped at 20 per tenant per UTC day. A suppressed response says not to retry. Duplicate appends bypass that daily-new-ticket cap but still consume the hourly attempt.
Automation tools (feature-gated)
The tools below let a harness discover, run, and build your StackJack Automations. All of them require the Agentic Orchestration feature, which is on by default for every workspace; StackJack can suspend it for an account, and while it is off these tools are hidden from discovery and any direct call returns a feature_disabled error — contact support if you are in that state. Once the feature is on, they split by risk:
These MCP-facing platform tools are separate from the three native Anthropic tools that an Automation can enable for web search, web fetch, and sandboxed code execution.
stackjack_list_agents,stackjack_get_run_transcript,stackjack_get_agent_run, andstackjack_suggest_agent_toolsare served to every connected client automatically — like the other platform tools, a restricted tool selection doesn't hide them.An explicit per-client grant is required for
stackjack_run_agent(it triggers billed agent runs), the two config readsstackjack_list_agent_configs/stackjack_get_agent_config(they expose automation configurations including system prompts), each authoring/lifecycle tool —stackjack_draft_agent,stackjack_update_agent_draft,stackjack_set_agent_lifecycle,stackjack_accept_agent_consent,stackjack_manage_agent_knowledge,stackjack_delete_agent,stackjack_delete_run_transcripts,stackjack_stage_agent— and each maintenance tool:stackjack_set_agent_definition,stackjack_get_agent_definition,stackjack_describe_agent_schema,stackjack_inspect_agent,stackjack_apply_agent_maintenance,stackjack_control_agent_run,stackjack_manage_agent_templates, andstackjack_manage_agent_memory. Each is granted by name, so an admin can let a client attach knowledge and re-provision without letting it accept consent, rotate a webhook secret, or delete anything. A client with no tool restriction gets them automatically once the feature is on; a client with a restricted selection must include each one deliberately — including any tool StackJack ships after that selection was made.A harness with these grants can build and maintain an automation end to end, the same way a person can in the builder: create it, revise it after it is live, change its schedule, write its fixed start and finish steps, accept its acknowledgments, install one from a template, and read why a run did what it did. Two things bound that. Every change is made as the person whose sign-in the connection is using — a client with no person behind it (an admin-created key) is refused on every write — and that person passes exactly the checks they would pass in the Portal. And adding or changing a step that changes something asks for the destructive-action acknowledgment again: the acknowledgment covers the list of those steps that existed when it was given, so changing that list withdraws it, and nobody can run those steps until a person accepts it again.
Drafting is only the start of what a granted harness can do: these tools cover the whole automation lifecycle, including editing a live automation, promotion, and destructive-action consent. Three controls bound them. First, every grant-required tool is granted by name, so an admin decides exactly how far a given client reaches. Second, every change is made as the person whose sign-in the connection is using, and that person passes exactly the checks they would pass in the Portal — a client with no person behind it is refused on every write. Third, the irreversible actions require exact confirmation text: accepting consent, retiring an automation, deleting run transcripts, deploying a staging copy, restoring a version, trimming tools, registering a schedule again, rotating webhook secrets, granting proposed tools, removing a memory revision, and erasing a memory. These are deterministic request guards: callers can compute or obtain the expected text, and the strings are not nonce-based, expiring, one-shot, or bound to a named approver. They create a deliberate second-call workflow, but the server cannot prove that a person saw or approved the consequence. Grant these tools only to clients whose confirmation behavior you trust.
If you need a named person on the general-consent record, accept it in the Portal; only the destructive-consent path can append an authenticated harness user when one is present. stackjack_accept_agent_consent cannot withdraw consent; archiving the automation is the way back.
When your organization is already using all its concurrent run slots — or the platform pool is full — a harness launch is queued rather than refused. stackjack_run_agent still returns immediately with a runId, but the run's status starts as Queued and it begins when a slot frees; keep polling stackjack_get_agent_run exactly as you would for a running run. A queued run that waits past its deadline ends as Skipped. That deadline is one hour by default, configurable per automation, and shorter for a scheduled automation so a queued run can never still be waiting when its next tick fires. The same applies when another run of the same automation is already in progress: the new attempt queues behind it.
capacity_exceeded is therefore a narrower signal than it sounds. It means queueing was not available for that attempt, and it has two sources: the global run-slot pool shared across the platform, and your own organization's concurrency limit. Read the returned message — a per-organization refusal names your organization and its slot count, and is not a StackJack outage. Transcript upstream rate limiting uses the same code.
A paused (Awaiting Input) run is separate again: it holds no slot and counts against neither limit. Resuming one is the single action that is refused rather than queued when capacity is short, which leaves the run resumable — try the resume again shortly.
Catalog-mode tools
When catalog machinery is active for a connection, five feature tools become eligible to power on-demand discovery and dispatch. Full and compact modes advertise the four direct tools; minimal advertises those four plus the stackjack_platform router. If the machinery is inactive, all five are absent.
The last two in the table are different: the catalog-mode switch tools are served to every connection in every mode, including when your organization has catalog modes switched off (in which case they answer with a plain "catalog modes are not enabled for your organization" and change nothing). They are the escape hatch — a harness whose tool list has been truncated by its own client-side budget can see the problem and fix it itself, without anyone opening the portal first. A restricted tool selection can't hide them either. All seven are Free (never plan-gated).
Dispatching a tool through stackjack_run_readonly_tool, stackjack_run_tool, or stackjack_platform runs the real tool with every permission, configuration, subscription, billing, allowance, and safety check applied exactly as a direct call — and usage is attributed to the tool you actually ran, not the dispatcher. For how modes, pins, and enablement work, see Catalog modes.
Do platform tools count against my quota?
Monthly allowances are per connector, and an ordinary platform tool is not a connector call. Session diagnostics, docs, status, catalog and support tools can be used freely without consuming any connector's allowance.
The dispatchers are the exception, and they are not really an exception at all. stackjack_run_readonly_tool, stackjack_run_tool, and stackjack_platform are wrappers: when one of them runs a connector tool, the connector call is real and is metered against that connector's monthly allowance exactly as a direct call would be. Usage is attributed to the tool that actually ran, not to the wrapper, so routing through catalog mode neither adds a charge nor avoids one.
More in Tools & Catalog
How MCP Tools Work in StackJackPlan Tiers and Tool GatingPermissions Page: Mapping Tools to Vendor API PermissionsChoosing Tools for Each Client and Managing Harness Tool LimitsStill need help? Ask the team