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Finding and using agents and tools in the governed agentic catalog

Last updated: Jul 17, 2025
Finding and using agents and tools in the governed agentic catalog

You can find governed agents and tools in the governed agentic catalog and then include those agents and tools in your gen AI solution.

The catalog can contain the following types of entries:

  • An AI agent is a software entity that defines its own configuration, capabilities, and interaction with inputs, tools, and the environment. Your organization can add code or endpoints for agents.

  • A tool is a function or program that the agent can call to perform a task. IBM provides a set of curated tools. Your organization can add custom tools.

An entry for an agent or tool in the catalog includes all necessary metadata to load and run it.

Requirements

You must be a collaborator, with any role, in the default inventory to access the governed agentic catalog.

Finding and viewing an agent or tool

To find and view an agent or tool:

  1. From the navigation menu, select AI Governance > Governed Agentic Catalog.
  2. Browse for agents and tools, set filters, or enter search keywords. You can filter by Provider name, Inventory ID, Category, Framework, or Runtime details. You can search across the name, description, and summary fields.
  3. Click the arrow icon next to the agent or tool to open the details page.

Comparing agents or tools

You can compare the following metrics of two agents or two tools:

  • Accuracy
  • Latency
  • Cost
  • Security Scores

To compare two agents or two tools:

  1. From the navigation menu, select AI Governance > Governed Agentic Catalog.
  2. Find the first agent or tool you want to compare, then click the three-dot menu (⋮) of the agent or tool tile.
  3. Click Select to compare from the dropdown menu, then checkboxes will appear on all the agents and tools tiles.
  4. Click on the checkbox of the agent or tool you want to compare.
  5. Click Compare to view the side-by-side comparison.

Loading and invoking agents and tools

To load and invoke an agent or tool in your AI service asset, call the invoke API call for agents, or the tool loader for tools from the watsonx.governance Python SDK. The SDK reads the agent or tool metadata (code or endpoint) from the inventory, loads the agent or tool by name, starts it with user inputs, and returns the response.

Parent topic: Governed agentic catalog