Enabling or disabling individual tools

When you add tools in Admin console → Platform → Tools, all tools are enabled by default. You can selectively disable individual tools to control exactly which operations are available to users in Assistant and to agents.

Why you'd do this

Tools bundle related operations together, but not every operation may be appropriate to expose. For example, the Jira tools include both read tools (Search issues, Get issue details) and write tools (Create issue, Create comment, Edit issue). You might want to enable read tools immediately while holding off on write tools until your team has tested them.

Common scenarios:

• Enable search and read tools only during a pilot rollout.
• Disable destructive tools (delete, close, archive) permanently.
• Enable a subset of tools for Assistant but a broader set for agents.
• Temporarily disable a specific tool while a bug is being resolved.

Configuration steps

1. Navigate to Glean Admin console.
2. Click Platform → Tools.
3. Click the tools you want to configure and go to the Configuration tab.
4. Click Edit settings under Enable tools.
5. Expand the Agents section to see the full list of individual tools available to agents.
6. Expand the Assistant section to see the list available in Assistant.
7. Uncheck any tools you want to disable.
8. Click Save.

note

The Agents and Assistant sections are configured independently. Disabling a tool in the Agents section doesn't automatically disable it in Assistant, and vice versa. For more on this distinction, see Enabling tools for Assistant vs Agents.

Read vs. write tools — recommended starting point

Tool type	Examples	Recommended default
Read	Search, Get, List, Fetch	Enable immediately
Write	Create, Update, Edit, Post	Enable after testing
Destructive	Delete, Close, Archive, Remove	Disable unless explicitly needed

Changes take effect immediately

Enabling or disabling an individual tool takes effect immediately — No re-crawl, restart, or re-authentication is needed. Active agent runs that have already started a step complete it; the change applies to new invocations only.

Difference from tools-level enable/disable

Disabling an individual tool is different from disabling all tools:

Scope	What it affects
Individual tool disabled	Only that specific operation is unavailable; the rest of the tools continue to work.
All tools disabled	All tools become unavailable across Assistant and agents.

To disable all tools, use the toggle at the top of the tools card rather than unchecking individual tools.

For any further issues or queries, reach out to the Glean support team.