Adding MCP Tools to Reachy Mini

["The Reachy Mini conversation app has just gained a significant upgrade: it can now utilize tools hosted in public Hugging Face Spaces, accessed through the Model Control Protocol (MCP). This development allows users to expand their robot's capabilities without modifying the app itself. For instance, you can enable your robot to check the weather or search the web by simply adding a Space from the Hub.

The tool runs remotely in the Space, eliminating the need for any code to be downloaded onto your machine. Moreover, you can publish your own tools for others to use, fostering a community-driven approach to tool development.", "So, what exactly is a tool in this context? A tool is a feature that the model can use during a conversation, such as playing an emotion, moving the head, or looking through the camera.

Each tool has a name and a short description, which the model reads to determine when to use it and how to integrate the output. Previously, all tools were local and embedded within the app, with most of them related to the robot's physical body. To make a tool usable, it had to be enabled in a profile, which is essentially a folder containing two key files: instructions.txt (the prompt) and tools.txt (the list of enabled tools).", "The introduction of remote tools adds a new dimension to the existing local tools.

While local tools are great for controlling the robot's body, they are limited when it comes to tasks that don't involve the physical aspects of the robot, such as web searches or weather updates. Remote tools, on the other hand, can be easily published, shared, and updated independently of the app. To test this feature, we created two canary tools: a web search tool and a weather tool, both hosted in public Hugging Face Spaces.

These tools demonstrate how the robot can now leverage remote capabilities to enhance its interactions.", "To use these remote tools, you simply need to add the Space to your profile and enable the tools you want to use. The app validates the Space, discovers its tools, and appends them to the active profile's tools.txt file. This file acts as a gatekeeper, determining which tools are available for use.

Remote tools are namespaced with a double underscore to prevent collisions with built-in tools, and the implementation strips redundant prefixes to create cleaner local IDs. We've also implemented a duplicate safety check to ensure that tool names are unique across the merged tool set.", "We're excited to see how users will leverage this new capability to expand their Reachy Mini's abilities. If you develop a tool Space, be sure to tag it with 'reachy-mini-tool' and 'mcp' so others can find it.