Tools, Permissions, and Side Effects

Tools are the actions Duckie agents can perform. Some tools only read information. Others create visible or persistent changes in customer systems, internal systems, or Duckie itself. Treat every tool choice as a permissions decision: what should this agent be able to see, say, update, or trigger?

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Tool Categories

Tools can search docs, read records, send messages, create tickets, update fields, call APIs, or return values to later workflow steps.

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Permissions Happen in Layers

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Read Tools vs Side Effects

A side effect is anything visible or persistent outside the agent’s reasoning. Examples of side effects:

• Sending a customer response with Responder
• Adding an internal note or public reply in a ticketing system
• Creating or updating a ticket, issue, task, page, note, or conversation
• Sending Slack, Discord, Teams, or Gmail messages
• Updating tags, priority, assignment, status, custom fields, labels, or metadata
• Calling a Custom Tool that changes your internal system
• Using Duckie Assistant MCP tools to create, update, or delete Duckie objects

Customer replies and internal notes are side effects. Write Action is the product label for tools that modify data.

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Safe Tool Access Patterns

• Start with least privilege: enable only the tools an agent needs.
• Prefer read and search tools before write tools.
• Keep write tools narrow and specific.
• For custom tools, mark the tool as Write Action when it modifies data.
• Use Requires Approval for sensitive or high-impact actions.
• Use Slack Approval Notify when reviewers should approve from Slack.
• Use workflows for predictable lookup, verification, approval, and action order.
• Add Restrictions and Escalation Rules for requests that need human judgment.
• Test tool-heavy designs before allowing real updates.

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Testing Without Unintended Changes

Use Testing mode before Live mode. For early rollout, use Internal notes only and No write actions when available. In Test > Playground, Test > Replay Chats, and Test > Batch Test, review whether the agent chose the right tool, used the right input, and produced the expected result. Use Analyze > Runs to inspect tool calls, inputs, outputs, status, and outcomes.

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