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Retain all 25 registered tools — close Task 1.2 by decision, not by telemetry-driven cuts

ADR-023: Retain all 25 registered tools — close Task 1.2 by decision, not by telemetry-driven cuts

Section titled “ADR-023: Retain all 25 registered tools — close Task 1.2 by decision, not by telemetry-driven cuts”

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-04-24 Deciders: Mishaal Murawala Supersedes (partial): Phase 1 Task 1.2 per V5-PHASE-1-CONSOLIDATION-SPRINT.md. ADR-018 exit-criterion for Task 1.2 is satisfied by this ADR.

Context

Section titled “Context”

Phase 1 Task 1.2 was scoped as “audit tools by telemetry, cut 3–5 with <5 calls/7d.” The plan explicitly listed candidates: discover_apis, aws_textract_analyze, gamma_generate, claude_files (already subsumed by the unified claude tool in Task 1.3), and any tool below the usage threshold.

PR #44 shipped the Analytics Engine telemetry pipeline on 2026-04-23, which would have produced the usage data by ~2026-04-30. In the 2026-04-24 session, Mishaal made an explicit call:

“we won’t be using some of the tools for a long time. but we don’t want to cut them. no need to wait.”

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

Retain all 25 currently registered tools. Close Task 1.2 as resolved by decision. Phase 1 is complete on 2026-04-24, not 2026-04-30.

Cuts are not the point of this task; correct sizing is. The user’s judgment is that low-near-term-use tools still have option value — removing them forces a future re-registration cost (tool file, tests, docs, TOOLS.md row, HANDOVER update, provider config) that outweighs the marginal token-schema savings today.

Why not cut anyway

Section titled “Why not cut anyway”
  1. Per-session token cost of schema is bounded. The 25-tool schema fits well within the MCP context budget. Cutting 4 tools saves perhaps 5–10% of tool-schema tokens, which is noise next to the 10× savings already delivered by consolidating claude_* in PR #49.
  2. Re-registration is not free. Every tool has a test file, a doc, a TOOLS.md row, and a PROVIDERS entry (for provider-backed tools). Re-adding one later is 30–60 min of ceremony; keeping it is zero.
  3. The telemetry is still valuable — it feeds per-tool latency p95s, error-rate alerts, and cost attribution. Keeping the pipeline without acting on “cut” signals is the correct use of the data at current scale.
  4. ADR-018 precondition 1 still binds. The pre-commit check 04 cap remains 25 (not bumped). Any future tool addition still requires dropping something else first — this ADR just freezes the current set against reflex cuts.

What the Phase 1 exit contract actually required

Section titled “What the Phase 1 exit contract actually required”

From the plan:

≤25 tools registered in src/handlers/mcp.ts (pre-commit check 04 cap updated to 25).

We are at exactly 25. The criterion was met in PR #49 (28 → 25 via claude_* consolidation), not by any subsequent cuts. Task 1.2 as originally scoped was a nice-to-have inside an already-satisfied exit criterion.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”

Positive

Section titled “Positive”
  • Phase 2 (Context Plane Scaffold) unblocks immediately. No 6-day idle wait on data.
  • Low-use tools stay in the surface for the agents that occasionally need them (discover_apis remains a useful first-call pattern for new agents; aws_textract_analyze stays for PDF-heavy workflows when they arrive; gamma_generate stays for content pipelines; etc.).
  • Removes a dependency on a specific calendar date (2026-04-30) which was always fragile.

Negative

Section titled “Negative”
  • Carrying 4–5 tools whose schema tokens deliver little value until someone uses them. Acceptable given the above math.
  • If we ever DO want to cut, we’ll need to run the audit query manually rather than inheriting the results from this Phase’s sprint work. Trivial cost.

Future-reversal trigger

Section titled “Future-reversal trigger”

If schema token cost becomes measurable (per-session p95 > 25% of context budget consumed by tool schema, or agents routinely hit context limits on tool-heavy sessions), revisit — but via explicit decision, not auto-cuts.

Phase 1 final status (2026-04-24)

Section titled “Phase 1 final status (2026-04-24)”

All exit criteria met:

  • ✅ ≤25 tools registered (25 exactly)
  • ✅ Zero Phase-1-scope Proposed ADRs (ADR-009 rejected, ADR-011 accepted)
  • ✅ docs/tech-debt-register.md with ≥10 rows (18 rows)
  • ✅ All 5 platform-spec gaps closed (Tasks 1.1 + 1.6 + 1.8)
  • ✅ CI green on main, zero drift
  • ⚠️ Bundle size 2072 KiB raw / 403 KiB gzip — 24 KiB over soft 2 MB target, not gate-enforced, acceptable
  • ✅ Task 1.2 closed by this ADR

Phase 1 is complete. Phase 2 (Context Plane Scaffold) may begin immediately per V5-PHASE-2-CONTEXT-PLANE.md.

References

Section titled “References”