Tool granularity

The vManage API is huge — 20.10 has 2,983 operations spread over 304 OpenAPI tags. Naively mapping one MCP tool per tag gives an LLM 300+ tools, which most clients (and most LLMs) cannot ingest cleanly.

So we offer two granularities:

Granularity	What it groups	Tools (20.10, RW)	Use when
section (default)	First word before " - "	38	You want the LLM to find anything across the API.
tag	Full Cisco tag	304	Your client can handle hundreds of tools and you want narrower descriptions.

How grouping works

A Cisco tag like Configuration - Feature Profile (SDWAN) is parsed as:

• section = Configuration
• tag = Configuration - Feature Profile (SDWAN)

In section mode all 1,500+ Configuration operations roll up into a single configuration tool. The tool's description still lists every operation by name, so the LLM still knows exactly what's available — it just picks action="getFeatureProfile" instead of having a configuration_feature_profile_sdwan tool to choose from.

Tradeoff

• section: fewer tools, but each tool's description is huge (megabytes for configuration). Some LLM clients reject oversized tool descriptions. If you hit this, switch to tag.
• tag: many tools but each one is small. Better for clients that gracefully handle hundreds of tools.

Switching

config.yaml:

sdwan:
  tag_granularity: section   # or "tag"

Or CLI override:

uv run sdwan-mcp --granularity tag