Concepts

Background reading on how Pipeworx is designed and why. None of this is required to use the gateway, but it helps when building agents that lean on it heavily.

  • Context Tax — why 1,200+ tools costs an agent the same context as ~20.
  • BYO keys and tiers — anonymous, BYO API key, OAuth account, paid — plus per-tool _apiKey passthrough.
  • Caching and freshness — every response carries a fresh_until timestamp.
  • Compound tools — the _intel pattern: one call, 3-5 underlying lookups in parallel.
  • Meta-tools — eight gateway-native tools that collapse multi-call patterns.
  • Memory — persistent agent state across calls and sessions.
  • Prompts — server-side workflow templates.
  • Resources — citable pipeworx:// URIs for entities.
  • Verticals — curated pack bundles per domain.

Last reviewed May 29, 2026