Missing description strings silently hide AI agent handlers from tool manifests
A development team discovered that their in-app AI agent could not access dozens of existing handlers because each lacked a required description string in its definition. Without that string, handlers are excluded from the manifest the agent receives, making them effectively invisible regardless of whether the underlying code works. Twenty-one handlers across the team's AI pipeline and prompt store features were affected, all functioning normally for human users but unreachable by the agent. The team also implemented a two-tier risk system, marking irreversible actions like hard deletes and free-text prompt edits as high-risk to prevent the agent from being granted permanent approval for those calls. Automated gap tests were added to each feature to catch undocumented handlers before they ship, since silent omissions produced no errors and were difficult to diagnose.
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