Unit 9 · Connect to external tools and data

Discover what an MCP server offers

You inspect the negotiated catalog for tools, prompts, resources, templates, and capabilities. Your app uses server-owned identifiers instead of guessing them.

inspectCatalog()7 focused minutesNot started

Unit example (nearest native match)

See the idea in context

mcp = AxMCPClient(AxMCPStreamableHTTPTransport(endpoint), {"namespace": "inventory"})
llm = OpenAICompatibleClient(api_key=api_key, model="gpt-5.4-mini")
program = ax(
    'request:string -> answer:string "Use the inventory MCP tool."',
    {"mcp": mcp},
)
try:
    catalog = mcp.inspect_catalog()
    print({
        "tools": [tool["name"] for tool in catalog["tools"]],
        "resources": catalog["resources"],
        "resourceTemplates": catalog["resourceTemplates"],
    })
    print(program.forward(llm, {"request": "Reindex inventory."}))
finally:
    mcp.close()

Run itIn your own project

pip install axllm

from axllm import ai, ax

llm = ai('openai', api_key=os.environ['OPENAI_API_KEY'])
classify = ax('review:string -> sentiment:class "positive, negative, neutral"')

Set OPENAI_APIKEY in your environment before running provider-backed code.

In the ax repo

From a clone of the ax repo:

npm run example -- python src/examples/python/mcp/native-mcp-tools.py

Active practice

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Answer 2 in a row to learn this · attempt 1

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See the idea in context

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Source-backed follow-up