defineChannelTool

Define a Standard Schema-validated tool with inferred arguments and Channels thread context.

defineChannelTool preserves a tool definition while inferring the handler argument type from its Standard Schema.

Signature

function defineChannelTool<Schema extends ObjectSchema>(
  tool: ChannelTool<Schema>,
): ChannelTool<Schema>;

interface ChannelTool<Schema extends ObjectSchema> {
  name: string;
  description: string;
  parameters: Schema;
  handler(
    args: InferSchemaOutput<Schema>,
    context: ChannelToolContext,
  ): unknown | Promise<unknown>;
}

Example

tools.ts

import { defineChannelTool } from "@copilotkit/channels";
import { z } from "zod";

export const getIncident = defineChannelTool({
  name: "get_incident",
  description: "Read an incident by id.",
  parameters: z.object({
    incidentId: z.string(),
  }),
  async handler({ incidentId }) {
    const incident = await incidents.get(incidentId);
    return incident;
  },
});

Register tools in createChannel({ tools }), add one with channel.tool(tool) before startup, or pass turn-scoped tools to thread.runAgent({ tools }).

Handler context

Field	Type	Managed behavior
`thread`	`Thread`	Current conversation handle.
`message`	`IncomingMessage \| undefined`	Current inbound message when the run began from a message trigger.
`user`	`ApplicationUser \| null`	Application user selected for this event.
`actor`	`ProviderActor`	Provider account that caused this event.
`signal`	`AbortSignal \| undefined`	Reserved optional field; the current SDK tool runner leaves it undefined.
`platform`	`string`	Normalized source provider, such as `"slack"` or `"teams"`.

Return raw objects or arrays for data. The SDK JSON-serializes non-string results for the model. A tool that already posted UI should return a short natural-language confirmation so the model does not repeat the card.

See Tools and context for a complete managed example.