Tool providers

A tool provider serves tools by name from a pool, rather than tools bound to one environment. Several providers can serve the same workspace; a call for a name is listed to every eligible provider and the first claim wins.

When to use one

• Tools that are not about a filesystem: a mail search, a ticket system, a database query, an internal API.
• Capacity that should scale by adding processes rather than by naming machines.
• Overriding a kernel tool family (today, the memory tools) with your own implementation under the workspace's explicit opt-in: a provider that takes memory_read must take the whole family, so there is never two memories under one name.

For tools that must run where particular files live, use a runner instead.

How it works

A tool provider has the same logical registration key as a Runner: its Account, Human manager and registration identifier. Assignment scope is separate access control. It has one non-revoked address, a transport-only credential and an epoch that re-pair advances. One manager cannot hold a Runner and a provider under the same identifier.

1. Connect with executor_kind: "tool_provider" through the device flow; the human approves it in Runners → Connect runner.
2. Announce the tool names it serves, with effect profiles and schemas, through the same announcement door a runner uses.
3. Read the inbox. Pool rows for the announced names appear for every eligible provider until the first claim wins; a provider row names no executor and is not canceled when another address is cleaned up.
4. Claim, run, commit — exactly as a runner does. See Claims and results.

A provider-addressed call runs in a one-task standalone run or as part of an ordinary run; the declaring agent's configuration still lists the tool so the model may call it, and the approval stage still judges every call.

In practice

rho's runner loop is the reference implementation: a process connected as a tool provider is the same loop on a pool row. Any program that can hold a transport credential and speak the inbox protocol can be a provider in any language.