Introducing Apps: connect once, then give each agent only the tools it needs

An agent is only as useful as the apps it can work in. A support agent needs your orders and your inbox. A release agent needs your code and your issue tracker. Until now, every app came to LoopEngine as an ability someone had built by hand. That works well, but it means an app is only there once someone has built it. Apps change that.

Apps, through their own MCP servers

Most of the apps you use now offer what's called an MCP server. MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is the standard way AI agents reach an app's tools, and it's supported across the industry, by OpenAI, Google and Microsoft as well as Anthropic. When an app publishes an MCP server, it's telling agents: here is what you can do in our app, and here is how. You don't need to know any of that to use it. In LoopEngine it simply shows up as an app you can connect.

Connect an app in a minute

Connecting an app takes a minute. Open the new Apps page in your workspace and pick one: Stripe, PayPal, Notion, Jira and Confluence, Linear, monday.com, Airtable, GitHub, GitLab, Sentry, Figma, Canva, Firecrawl and more, 29 to start with. Each is the server the company itself publishes, so its tools are the ones it maintains. If the app you want isn't there, you can search the public MCP Registry, which lists over a thousand more, or add your own company's server for your internal systems. Paste the app's key, LoopEngine checks that it works, and the key is stored in your workspace, never shown again.

Every tool, with a sensible default

Once an app is connected, all of its tools are available to your workspace, each with a sensible default:

• Tools that only read, like looking up a customer or searching issues, run on their own.
• Anything that changes something, like issuing a refund, opening a pull request or sending a message, asks you first.

You can see every tool and its default on the app's page, along with which of your agents use it.

Each agent gets only the tools you choose

Here is the part we care about most. Connecting an app doesn't give any agent anything. You decide, agent by agent, which tools each one gets. When you add GitHub to your support agent, you might tick just four tools: search issues, read an issue, list recent changes and comment on an issue. Your release agent, added separately, might also get the tools to open and merge pull requests. Each tool has its own permission, for that agent alone:

• Allow: it runs on its own.
• Ask me: it waits for you to approve it.
• Never: it's blocked.

There's a one-click option to select only the read-only tools, which is a safe place to start, and you can change an agent's tools any time without affecting the others.

This matters because the fewer tools an agent has, the better it does its job. It has fewer wrong turns to take, and there's less it could do by mistake. An agent that can only read issues can't close one, however a request is worded.

Templates and workflows choose for you

You often won't have to choose at all. Templates now add the apps they need with exactly the tools their job uses. The incident triage template, for example, adds GitHub with the tools for reading deploys, changes and issues, plus opening and commenting on issues, which ask you first. Workflows do the same: when you describe a job and a step needs an app, LoopEngine works out which of the app's tools does that step, connects the app if it isn't connected yet, and gives the agent just those tools.

What happens to abilities

GitHub and Stripe used to be abilities. They're apps now, so you get every tool they offer rather than the handful an ability included, and you choose which ones each agent uses. Abilities are still here for everything else:

• Apps that don't have an MCP server yet, like Gmail and Shopify.
• Things that aren't apps at all, like searching the web or your own documents.
• Private abilities for your own systems.

Coming next: signing in with your browser

One thing to know: some apps only let you connect by signing in to them in your browser, rather than with a key. LoopEngine connects with keys today, and signing in is what we're building next. When an app needs it, its Connect button tells you.

Try it

To try it, open Apps in your workspace, connect an app you already use, and add it to one of your agents with a few of its tools. Start with the read-only ones, watch what the agent does, and give it more when you're ready.