Agent & Tools

The Alkera agent works on your organization’s data. A wrong change there is quiet and expensive, so the agent is built around one idea: reads are cheap, and anything that changes state has to earn its way through.

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Tools

The agent acts only through tools. It can:

• Query data: run SQL against your connections and read table and column schemas.
• Work with files and code: read and edit files in the workspace and run shell commands on its machine.
• Build notebooks: create and edit notebooks, run cells, and show outputs in the chat.
• Use knowledge: search and read the knowledge base, and record what it learns.
• Use lineage: trace how an asset is produced and what depends on it with lineage.

Every tool call is classified by its effect and passes the same permission gate, so the rules below hold whether the agent is running SQL, a shell command, or a notebook cell.

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Effects

Every action is classified by its effect before it runs. When the agent asks for approval, the card tells you which effect it has. SQL is parsed into a syntax tree, so the effect is taken from every statement in it. A DELETE hidden inside a CTE is still a delete. Shell commands are parsed the same way, including pipelines and subshells.

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Permission modes

The mode decides what happens when the agent reaches an action that is not a read. Pick it in the composer, or press Shift + Tab to cycle. Your starting mode for new chats is your saved default. Only people who can edit a chat can change its mode.

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Approving actions

When the agent is gated, it shows an approval card with what it wants to do and why. You can:

• Allow once: run it this time.
• Reject once: refuse it this time. The agent adapts and continues.
• Always allow: save a rule so the same kind of action passes next time.
• Always reject: save a rule so it is refused next time.

“Always” rules are deliberately narrow:

• For most shell commands, a rule covers the command family. Allowing ls -la also allows ls src.
• A destructive command is remembered only as its exact text, offered as Always allow this exact command.
• No standing rule is offered for commands whose meaning depends on what they expand to when they run.
• Rules apply to the mode you answered in, and belong to you. Only the chat’s owner can save one.

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Large results

A query that returns thousands of rows should not be pasted into a conversation. It would cost a fortune in tokens, bury the reasoning, and force the agent to read numbers one by one. So when a result is larger than 50 rows or 64 KiB, Alkera stores it as a result and gives the agent a handle and a small preview. The agent can check its shape and columns, profile it, filter and sort it, and run read-only SQL over it in place. Querying a large result can produce a smaller one, so the agent can narrow a result step by step. Open Results in the chat to see every result it produced. Each one pages through the full data and can be downloaded.

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What the agent reads first

Before it changes anything, the agent grounds itself in two things.

• Knowledge tells it what your data means and what your team already decided. It reads the knowledge base before it plans, and records what it learns.
• Lineage tells it how your data is produced. It uses lineage to find what a change would break downstream.

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