Understanding tools
Tools are the actions your AI agent is allowed to take. Without tools, an agent can think and reason but can't actually do anything. By assigning tools, you give your agent the ability to read data, write data, communicate, and interact with the world.
How tools work
Your AI agents run in a self-contained environment, completely separate from Street and Spectre. The only way an agent can interact with your products, your data, or external services is through the tools you explicitly assign to it.
This is a core safety principle in Cortex: an agent can only do what you give it tools to do. If you don't give an agent the "Send email" tool, it cannot send emails - regardless of what its instructions say.
Available tool categories
Street tools
There are over 100 tools available in Cortex, with more being added regularly. Street tools alone cover every aspect of sales, lettings, and property management. Examples include:
Create applicant - Register a new sales or lettings applicant.
Update applicant - Modify an applicant's record with new information.
Search people - Look up contacts and applicant records.
View sales information - Read data about sales, offers, and chains.
Create notes / Read notes - Add or review notes on records.
Send email - Send an email on your behalf.
Send SMS - Send a text message.
Send WhatsApp - Send a WhatsApp message.
Match address to property - Link a correspondence address to property data.
Transaction history - View the transaction history for a property.
Booking engine - Access available appointment slots for viewings and valuations.
Spectre tools
These tools give your agent access to property intelligence and your marketing suite:
Get property data - Retrieve information about a specific property.
Generate property report - Create a detailed property report.
Get agent listings in area - View competing listings in a given area.
Identify landlords - Find landlords in your database with properties managed by other agents.
Create blog - Write and publish a blog post to your Spectre website.
Inspect website - Read and review content on your website.
External tools
These extend your agent's reach beyond Street Group products:
Slack - Send messages to a Slack channel or direct message, useful for notifications and alerts.
Microsoft Teams - Send messages and notifications via Teams.
Web search - Search the internet for information, useful for research tasks.
Web fetch - Retrieve content from specific web pages, allowing the agent to read and gather information from the internet.
Cortex tools
These are special tools unique to the Cortex environment:
Generate PDF - Create a PDF document.
Trigger agent - Start another agent from within the current agent. This is an extremely powerful tool for building multi-agent workflows.
Wait for response - Pause the agent and wait for a reply to a message it has sent (via email, SMS, or WhatsApp). This allows agents to have back-and-forth conversations.
Adding tools to your agent
When creating or editing an agent, navigate to the Tools section. You'll see the full list of available tools, grouped by category. Simply toggle on the tools you want your agent to have access to.
Only give an agent the tools it needs. Following the principle of least privilege means your agent is safer and more predictable. If an agent's job is to write blog posts, it doesn't need access to email or applicant creation tools.
Street is constantly being updated. This can mean that some of these articles become slightly out of date. If you spot something that looks a little bit different to your Street account, please let us know on the live chat so we can get it updated!