mcp-delegation

Give your agent a "hand this off" button

This shows how to bolt a delegation toolkit onto any agent so that, mid-conversation, it can fan a piece of work out to a fresh worker agent instead of blocking the chat — then check on it and read the result later. The toolkit ships as an MCP server (a standard side-process an agent talks to over stdio), and this example both prints the exact config you paste into your agent and then boots the server to prove the tools are really there. It runs offline in a diagnostic mode with no API key.

Why it matters

Long tasks kill chat UX: the user asks for something slow, and the agent goes silent for two minutes. Delegation lets the agent say "I'll start that and keep talking," dispatch it to a worker, and surface the result when it's done. You don't build any of that — you mount one MCP entry into your agent's profile and the delegation verbs show up as tools the agent can call on its own.

How it works

The example has two blocks:

1. Profile — builds the literal mcp entry you drop into your agent's AgentProfile. It launches the toolkit via npx -y @tangle-network/agent-runtime mcp and passes it env vars. That's the whole integration — copy the printed block.
2. Smoke test — spawns the locally-built server (dist/mcp/bin.js), asks it to list its tools over stdio, and asserts the always-on ones are present.

The tools it exposes:

• delegate — the one generic verb: an agent that authors and drives its own worker, then returns the worker's output plus what it really spent. Only registers when MCP_ENABLE_DELEGATE=1 and a real sandbox key resolves.
• delegate_feedback — rate a past delegation (always on).
• delegation_status — poll a job: pending / running / completed (always on).
• delegation_history — read past delegations, newest first (always on).

See it work — no API key needed

pnpm build                                          # produces dist/mcp/bin.js
pnpm tsx examples/mcp-delegation/mcp-delegation.ts

With no TANGLE_API_KEY set, the example runs the server in a diagnostic mode (AGENT_RUNTIME_MCP_ALLOW_NO_KEY=1, set for you) so it still lists tools. You'll see:

— PROFILE ————————————————————————————————
profile.name: demo-product-agent
profile.mcp[agent-runtime-delegation]:
{ ...the config block to copy... }

— SMOKE ———————————————————————————————————
server: agent-runtime-mcp@<version>
tools: [delegate_feedback, delegation_history, delegation_status]
OK — the always-on queue-bound delegation tools are exposed.

The generic delegate verb is absent here on purpose — it needs a live sandbox key.

Files

File	What's in it
mcp-delegation.ts	Builds the profile MCP entry, then spawns and smoke-tests the server
README.md	This file

Wiring it into your own product

Set MCP_ENABLE_DELEGATE=1 and a real TANGLE_API_KEY in the mounted entry's env, then pass your profile to sandboxClient.create({ backend: { profile } }). The agent then sees the delegation tools mid-turn and can fan work out without blocking the chat. Omit MCP_ENABLE_DELEGATE and only the always-on trio is exposed. For the multi-machine variant where delegations dispatch into a shared workspace, see ../fleet-delegation/.