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Best Practices for Using MCP Tools in Agent Definitions | Dust Community

Best Practices for Using MCP Tools in Agent Definitions

Thomas Albisser

·May 22, 2025 12:29 PM·

Hello, Basic question but I can't find anything in the documentation - I added MCP servers as "tools" in my agent definition. In the agent instructions, I added a step by step process, and, the last step is : Then you must create a Jira ticket by using the provided Jira MCP tool It worked one time a few days ago but, since then, I didn't manage to make the agent call the tool. Is there any best practice to ask agent deal with MCP tools ?

20 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Remi
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Thanks Thomas Albisser, the way you used it should work just fine. Is the tool still properly setup at the workspace level? Server running properly, authentification working well, etc. What does your agent say when you say something like "use tool call "Jira" and do X"?
Thomas Albisser
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Most of the time, it say nothing. One time, there was a "Note: There was an error while building instructions for Jira ticket creation." Any logs or something to help debug ?
Remi
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Sébastien Flory what would be the best way to debug here? 🙏
Sébastien Flory
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You have no more information from the "tool output" window ?
Sébastien Flory
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or on Jira's side ?
Thomas Albisser
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no, I just see on Zapier than the tool wasn't called
Sébastien Flory
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I mean, in our tool output (in the conversation)
Thomas Albisser
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No
Sébastien Flory
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Thomas Albisser if you ask your agent to list the tools like "List all the tools available to you as well as their arguments".
Sébastien Flory
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Can you show me the answer ?
Sébastien Flory
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Also, if you click on the jira action in agent builder, it should list the tools (aka function) from your MCP server, what does it says ?
Thomas Albisser
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Here are all the available tools and their parameters:
1.
include_data_sources_3
Description: Retrieves markdown format for Jira descriptions
Parameters: None required
4.
search_data_sources_2
Description: Searches CRM and help desk system (support tickets, meeting notes & transcripts)
Required Parameters:
query: Search string for semantic similarity search
relativeTimeFrame: Time restriction (all, {k}h, {k}d, {k}w, {k}m, {k}y where k is a number)
7.
search_data_sources_3
Description: Searches ticketing system (US-Web/fliip, MOBILE, ROAD, DATA projects)
Required Parameters:
query: Search string for semantic similarity search
relativeTimeFrame: Time restriction (all, {k}h, {k}d, {k}w, {k}m, {k}y where k is a number)
10.
include_data_sources
Description: Retrieves user story template
Parameters: None required
13.
search_data_sources_4
Description: Searches Slack channels for support questions & tickets
Required Parameters:
query: Search string for semantic similarity search
relativeTimeFrame: Time restriction (all, {k}h, {k}d, {k}w, {k}m, {k}y where k is a number)
16.
search_data_sources
Description: Searches source code repositories
Required Parameters:
query: Search string for semantic similarity search
relativeTimeFrame: Time restriction (all, {k}h, {k}d, {k}w, {k}m, {k}y where k is a number)
19.
reasoning__advanced_reasoning
Description: Offloads complex reasoning tasks to a powerful reasoning model
Parameters: None required
Note: There seems to be an error with the Jira tools availability, so we currently cannot create Jira tickets directly. You'll need to provide the Jira ticket content in markdown format that you can copy/paste manually.
Sébastien Flory
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seems like we can't connect to the jira server
Sébastien Flory
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How does it look in spaces > administration > tools if you try to resync ?
Thomas Albisser
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https://screencasts.myfliip.com/recordings/x8sJsT5j1DkB8tfD6lpE for the tool list