← All Patterns
External Connector Pattern diagram
External Connector Pattern — structural diagram

Motivation

Agents that call external systems directly bypass governance, create hidden dependencies, and cannot be tested in isolation. Every external call is a governance boundary — it must be verified, logged, and policy-checked before execution.

The connector layer enforces policy at the boundary, abstracts the protocol, and makes external dependencies explicit and testable.

Structure

Key Concepts

MCPHttpConnector MCPStdioConnector BaseMCPAgent MCPClientAgent MCP tool server protocol governance boundary

Used in K9-AIF

MCPHttpConnector MCPStdioConnector BaseMCPAgent MCPClientAgent DocumentExtractorAgent (EOC) Docling OCR MCP server