Tool inventory

This is the full set of tools an assistant can call once connected. Almost all of them are read-only: they find or describe photos and change nothing. The four organizing tools at the end of the table are the exception — they let an assistant mark favorites and build collections. Every organizing action is reversible, your assistant asks before each one runs, and nothing can be deleted through any tool.

At a glance

Tool	What it does	Page
`search_photos`	Find photos by a plain-language description	Search tools
`find_similar`	Find photos visually similar to a given one	Search tools
`query_media`	Filter the library by date, place, camera, and more	Library and metadata tools
`get_photo_details`	Return every detail for a single photo	Library and metadata tools
`get_photo_file`	Return a thumbnail so the assistant can see the photo	Library and metadata tools
`list_recent_photos`	List the most recent photos	Library and metadata tools
`get_library_stats`	Summarize what is in the library	Library and metadata tools
`get_photos_by_location`	Find photos taken near a place	People, places, and trips
`get_locations`	List the places you have photographed	People, places, and trips
`get_trips`	List detected trips	People, places, and trips
`get_people`	List the people you have named	People, places, and trips
`get_entity_clusters`	List the things and subjects in your library	People, places, and trips
`get_connections`	Show what tends to appear together	People, places, and trips
`search_transcripts`	Search the words spoken in your videos	Search tools
`get_on_this_day`	Photos from this day in earlier years, grouped by year	Library and metadata tools
`get_photo_counts`	Count photos by month, camera, place, person, capture kind, and more	Library and metadata tools
`find_duplicates`	Group duplicate photos with a suggested keeper per group	Library and metadata tools
`get_collections`	List collections, or read one collection’s photos	Library and metadata tools
`set_favorite`	Mark a photo as a favorite, or remove the mark	Library and metadata tools
`create_collection`	Create a named collection to organize photos into	Library and metadata tools
`add_to_collection`	Add photos to a collection	Library and metadata tools
`remove_from_collection`	Take photos out of a collection	Library and metadata tools

Organizing actions

set_favorite, create_collection, add_to_collection, and remove_from_collection are the first tools that change anything — and what they change is organization only, never the photos themselves. They run on the cloud server (Cloud AI Access), every action has an inverse, and nothing can be deleted through them. Approval prompts are the assistant’s own behavior: Claude asks before each organizing call; other assistants may not, so check yours if that matters to you. Every confirmation names the affected photos (description and date) so you — and the assistant — can verify it changed exactly what you meant. Photos can be referenced by the media_id values from the same connection’s results, or by the short photo reference that rides result cards, which points at the same photo on every Avlok connection. What an assistant organizes appears in the Avlok app under the Assistant section, and query_media gains a favorite filter so favorites can be read back anywhere. get_collections is plain read-only and works on both servers.

Availability by surface

Not every tool is available everywhere. The local server can do things that depend on desktop-only features.

Local (Claude Desktop, stdio): all read tools, including search_transcripts and get_collections. The organizing tools are cloud-only — the local server stays read-only — but favorites and collections created in the cloud sync down, so reading them works locally too.
Cloud (web assistants, Cloud AI Access): the search, library, metadata, place, trip, and people tools plus the organizing tools, scoped to the folders you have shared. Searching the words spoken in videos is a desktop feature; in the cloud, the assistant is told to use the desktop for that.

Recipes (prompts)

Beyond tools, both servers ship a small set of named recipes — multi-step workflows the assistant can run for you. Clients that support the MCP prompts primitive (Claude Desktop shows them as slash commands) list them automatically; clients that don’t lose nothing, since recipes only orchestrate the tools above and are just as read-only.

Recipe	What it does
`on-this-day`	A short memory brief: photos from this day in earlier years.
`duplicate-review`	Duplicate groups with a keep candidate each. Reports only; never offers to delete.
`year-in-review`	A narrative review of one year: volume, places, trips, subjects, gear.
`highlights`	A curated highlights set for a trip, person, place, or date range.
`person-timeline`	The arc of one named person: first seen, cadence, trips, usual company.

A note on captions

Most tools that return photos include a short text description of each one, when available. It may be absent for a photo that is brand new or not yet described. Clients should treat a missing description as normal and reason from the other details (date, place, camera) rather than failing.