Read tools, every connector wired into Nerve Centre
App Builder reads from the same data layer that powers Nerve Centre and Vortex Mind. Any connector you have authenticated in your workspace is available as a read tool. The major read surfaces:| Surface | Connectors | Typical reads |
|---|---|---|
| Storefront | Shopify, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Magento | Orders, products, customers, refunds, draft orders, abandoned carts, themes, pages |
| Marketplace | Amazon, eBay, Walmart, OnBuy, Cdiscount, FNAC, Rakuten, Allegro, Fruugo (via CloudHub) | Listings, inventory, orders, FBA stock, buy-box state, account balance |
| Analytics | Google Analytics, Google Search Console | Sessions, page views, conversion rate, source / medium, search query terms |
| Advertising | Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads | Spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, ROAS, campaign / ad-group / keyword detail |
| Payment | Stripe, PayPal, Cybersource | Transactions, refunds, chargebacks, decline reason codes, payouts |
| Performance | Datadog, New Relic, PageSpeed Insights, CrUX, website performance | Metrics, logs, traces, monitors, Core Web Vitals, real-user data |
| Klaviyo, Dotdigital, Mailchimp | Campaigns, lists, send rates, open and click rates, recipient activity | |
| Tickets and ops | Jira, Linear, Slack, Microsoft Teams | Tickets, issues, channel messages, project state |
Write tools, notification and ticket channels
The write side is where App Builder turns insight into action. Write tools fall into four buckets.Notification channels
| Tool | What the agent can do |
|---|---|
| Slack | Post a message to a channel, post to a thread, send a DM, post a block-kit formatted message, attach files, react with an emoji |
| Microsoft Teams | Post a message to a channel, send a chat message, post an adaptive-card formatted message, attach links |
| Email (transactional) | Send an email to a single recipient or a list, with subject, body, attachments, formatted as plain text or HTML |
| SMS via Twilio | Send a text message to a phone number, with optional MMS attachment |
| Klaviyo | Trigger a flow, send a campaign to a segment, add a customer to a segment |
| Dotdigital | Send a transactional email, trigger a programme, add a contact to an address book |
Ticket and issue creation
| Tool | What the agent can do |
|---|---|
| Jira | Create an issue, update an issue, add a comment, transition status, assign a user, link to other issues |
| Linear | Create an issue, set priority, assign to a user, attach to a project, add labels |
| Vortex IQ Actions Kanban | Create an Action, route to a swimlane, set severity, attach evidence from Vortex Mind |
| GitHub Issues | Open an issue, label it, assign it, link to a milestone |
| ServiceNow | Open an incident, set priority, assign to a group, attach evidence |
Platform write actions
These are the highest-trust tools because they modify the merchant’s storefront or marketplace state directly. Approval gates are recommended for production runs.| Tool | What the agent can do |
|---|---|
| Shopify | Update product field (price, inventory, title, description), publish or unpublish a product, add a tag, create a discount, draft an order |
| BigCommerce | Update product field, publish or unpublish, modify category assignment, create a coupon |
| Adobe Commerce / Magento | Update product, modify inventory, change category, update CMS page |
| CloudHub | Adjust master inventory, change a per-marketplace listing, route a pending order, trigger a repricing rule run |
| Klaviyo | Add or remove a customer from a list, trigger a flow, send a campaign |
| Email and CRM | Add a contact to a CRM, update a deal stage, attach a note |
Generic webhook
For any system that exposes an HTTPS endpoint, the Webhook tool lets the agent call it with a structured JSON payload and use the response in subsequent steps. This is the escape hatch when you have a custom internal system the agent should integrate with.Reasoning tools, agent-callable AI surfaces
These are the most distinctive tools in the App Builder toolkit. They let an agent delegate part of its work to other AI surfaces inside the Vortex IQ AI OS.Ask Viq as a tool
The agent can ask Ask Viq a plain-English question and use the answer in the workflow. This is enormously powerful because it means the agent does not need to know the SQL, the Elasticsearch query, the GA4 dimension key, or the Stripe API filter. It just asks Ask Viq, and Ask Viq translates the question into the right query against the right source. Examples of agent-to-Ask-Viq calls:- “Ask Ask Viq: what was last week’s revenue compared to the week before?”
- “Ask Ask Viq: which SKU had the highest week-over-week sales growth?”
- “Ask Ask Viq: how many orders are stuck in Pending in CloudHub right now?”
- “Ask Ask Viq: which keywords drove the most conversions on Google Ads in March?”
Vortex Mind reports as triggers and tools
The agent can:- Subscribe to a Vortex Mind report. Trigger the app whenever the Daily Revenue Leakage, Decline Recovery, Checkout Conversion Failure, Customer Recovery, Ads Revenue Intel, Paid Traffic Waste, or Payment Performance report produces a new finding above a severity threshold.
- Run a Vortex Mind report on demand. As part of the workflow, run a report and use the findings in the next step (“run the Daily Revenue Leakage report, take the top 3 findings, post them to #ops”).
- Read a Vortex Mind finding’s evidence. Pull the underlying evidence (the supporting data points, the affected SKUs, the customer cohorts) and use them in subsequent tool calls.
Vortex Memory retrieval
The agent can query Vortex Memory for past run output, archived reports, uploaded files, or knowledge base entries. Common patterns:- “Read the last week’s Tuesday Slack summary from Vortex Memory and compute the trend against this week.”
- “Find the brand DNA document in Vortex Memory and use it as context for drafting the customer email.”
- “Pull the last incident report from Vortex Memory and link to it in the Jira ticket.”
Tool composition, sub-agents
Complex apps decompose into sub-agents. A sub-agent is a scoped agent with its own toolkit and its own prompt, called by the parent agent for a specific sub-task. This pattern was already present in V1 Agent Hub (the Connector Agent orchestrated five sub-agents to discover API credentials, the Ask Viq Agent routed to specialist sub-agents). App Builder makes it explicit and editable. Common sub-agent patterns:- Read sub-agent. Pulls and aggregates data from one or more connectors, returns a structured result to the parent.
- Draft sub-agent. Drafts the human-facing output (email body, Slack message, ticket description) from structured input.
- Approval sub-agent. Routes a draft to the merchant for approval and waits for the response.
- Branch sub-agent. Picks one of several next steps based on a condition (severity, threshold, customer cohort).
Permissions and credential scope
Tools inherit credentials from the connectors authenticated in the workspace. App Builder agents do not get more access than the connector itself has. If your Shopify connector is read-only, the Shopify write tools are not available to App Builder. If your Slack connector is scoped to specific channels, the agent can only post to those channels. You can further restrict an individual app’s access in the plan view: “this app can only read from Shopify orders, not from Shopify customers.” The agent respects per-app scopes at run time.Cross-links
- See how tools fit into the agent flow on How it works.
- See a worked example of tool selection on Building an app.
- Browse legacy recipes on Recipes and FAQs for examples of common toolkits per workflow type.
- Understand monitoring and error handling on Deployment and monitoring.