# Agent tools

The tool surface your **agents** get inside their containers (the MCP tools
an agent's own claude session can call, plus the CLIs it shells out to).
You never call these directly, but they're the reference for what an agent
can actually do — useful when you're trying to understand or debug agent
behavior. The operator's own tools are in
[`2-handbook/hives/`](../../2-handbook/hives/README.md).

## What your agents can do

- **[bash](bash.md)** — background shell execution (`mcp__bash__*`),
  available on every agent unconditionally.
- **[subagent](subagent.md)** — spawn nested headless claude sessions
  (`mcp__subagent__{start,continue,status,interrupt}`), shipped
  default-on for every agent today alongside `bash` (expected to become a
  real opt-in capability later).
- **[forge](forge.md)** — the `hive-forge` Forgejo CLI every agent has
  for issues, PRs, and comments. Not an MCP tool — a binary agents
  shell out to instead of ad-hoc curl.
- **[forge-cli](forge-cli.md)** — the exhaustive, autogenerated
  flag-by-flag reference for `hive-forge`, kept in lockstep with the
  binary by CI the same way `hivectl-cli.md` is.
- **[swarm-logs-cli](swarm-logs-cli.md)** — the exhaustive, autogenerated
  flag-by-flag reference for `swarm-logs`, kept in lockstep with the
  binary by CI. No curated guide.
- **[swarm-metrics-cli](swarm-metrics-cli.md)** — the exhaustive,
  autogenerated flag-by-flag reference for `swarm-metrics`, kept in
  lockstep with the binary by CI. No curated guide.
- **[matrix](matrix.md)** — the matrix MCP tool surface
  (`mcp__matrix__*`) for agents with a matrix account, multiple
  accounts per agent, and declaring extra MCP servers generally.