Picture this: you connect an AI agent to your API and, all at once, dozens of "tools" pile into its context before it's done a thing. There has to be a better way, and there are a few, each with its own trade-offs.

After a quick refresher on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and its PHP SDK (how an agent discovers your tools, understands what they expect, and calls them), we'll look at how to feed an agent its tools with Symfony and API Platform. From automatic strategies (generating tools from your API, or a Hydra gateway that lets the agent discover them by navigating hypermedia links) to the manual approach, declaring exactly the tools you want using PHP attributes.

We'll build them live and weigh them honestly: what saturates the context, what scales, what respects the constraints of REST/HATEOAS. You'll leave knowing which approach fits your own APIs.