Action Gateway is in public preview.
What You Can Build with Action Gatewaypublic
Last verified 23 Sep 2026
Action Gateway gives applications and AI agents governed access to tens of thousands of tools through a managed MCP endpoint or SDK. See What You Can Build for example use cases of Action Gateway with Harness Runtime.
Action Gateway connects agents and applications to tools through a managed MCP endpoint or SDK. Use it with a coding agent on your laptop, an agent framework, or your own application. Harness Runtime is not required: your application runs the agent, while Action Gateway handles tool discovery, provider credentials, and tool execution.
Worked Examples
Each worked example includes a session-creation script, the tools and permissions to configure, client connection steps, and a task to try.
| Example | What you build | Action Gateway configuration |
|---|---|---|
| Build a Web Research Assistant | Find sources, read web pages, and produce a brief with citations. | Select and preload Exa search and fetch, allow those calls, and optionally use an output view to keep search results small. |
| Triage Jira Issues | Read issues, propose next steps, and post a comment after a person approves it. | Authorize a Jira connection for the session’s actor, preload read tools, and require approval for comments. |
Other Application Patterns
The same controls support workflows beyond the worked examples:
- Connected-account assistants: Give each application user access to their own provider accounts. Authenticate the user in your application, assign an actor ID, and create sessions that use that actor’s connections.
- Reports across services: Make known tool calls directly from Python, combine the results, and send only the data needed for a model decision. See Call Tools Directly for Fixed Workflow Steps. For agent-written code that calls tools and filters intermediate results in a sandbox, use programmatic tool calling.
- Internal-service assistants: Add a custom provider to expose an internal MCP server alongside catalog tools. Configure its authentication and select the operations the workflow needs.
Choose How the Agent Uses Tools
For open-ended tasks, a session with All tools lets the agent search the catalog as needs arise. Action Gateway exposes three meta tools rather than loading every tool definition into the model’s context. Calls still require the appropriate permissions and provider connections.
For a defined workflow, select specific tools and use a default-deny policy. Preload frequently used tools so the agent can call them without searching, and use output views to return only the fields it needs. Keep fixed steps in application code when their order must not depend on a model decision.
Start with the Quickstart to connect a coding agent. Use Configure Action Gateway for Production Agents for the shared configuration and deployment checklist behind the examples.