Govern
What are the Govern tools for?
The `govern` MCP tools cover budgets, teams, roles, org members, tagging policies, smart tags and audit logs. Reads need no write tier. Role and member tools such as `create_role` and `add_org_member` sit at tier 1. Organisation deletion, cloud-account deletion, credential reads and org-level role assignment have no tool at any tier.
Tools
| Tool | Access | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
get_budget_spend | read | Get current-month spend for the entities a budget targets — use this to answer 'how much has account X / this resource / this group spent so far', and to see which targets are tracking over |
get_cloud_account_permissions | read | Get the per-permission IAM probe verdicts for one cloud account — use this to explain WHY discovery or a cost/recommendation feature is missing data, rather than guessing |
get_team | read | Get details of a specific team including member count and resource count |
list_audit_logs | read | List API audit log entries showing who did what and when |
list_notification_channels | read | List notification channels (Slack, Teams, Google Chat, webhooks) configured for the organisation |
list_roles | read | List the roles defined in this organisation and the RBAC policies each one carries |
list_smart_tags | read | List smart tags — the tags ZopNight DERIVES for a resource from this org's tagging policies, to fill gaps in the tags the cloud account actually carries |
list_tagging_policies | read | List the tagging policies that govern which tags this org's resources must carry and how each tag's value is derived |
list_team_members | read | List members of a team |
list_team_resources | read | List resources assigned to a team |
list_teams | read | List teams in the organisation |
list_users | read | List all users in the organisation |
accept_smart_tag | write | Accept smart tags on a resource — promote tag keys ZopNight DERIVED from this org's tagging policies into cost attribution |
create_budget | write | Create a monthly spend budget for ONE resource, resource group or cloud account |
delete_budget | write | Delete a budget |
revoke_smart_tag | write | Revoke smart tags on a resource — return accepted tag keys to PENDING, so they stop being used for cost attribution |
update_budget | write | Change an existing budget's monthly amount and alert threshold |
create_tagging_policy | write | Create a resource TAGGING policy — a rule that derives a tag onto this org's cloud resources so their spend can be attributed |
update_tagging_policy | write | Change an existing resource TAGGING policy — its label, its rule, or whether it is on |
Roles and members are in reach at tier 1
Role and membership tools sit in this category at tier 1, the lowest write tier: create_role,
update_role, delete_role, add_org_member, update_org_member, remove_org_member,
add_team_member, remove_team_member and update_team_member_role. Every call runs as the
user whose token the assistant holds, and the gateway checks that user’s own permissions, so an
assistant can change roles and membership only as far as its user could in the app.
Every write is opt-in per organisation. The org’s mcp_write_tier starts at none, and a global
MCP_WRITE_ENABLED switch, off by default, keeps every write tool inert until it is turned on.
Four things have no tool at any tier: deleting the organisation, deleting a cloud account,
reading credentials, and assigning org-level roles. Assigning a role to a team member is
different: add_team_member and update_team_member_role both take a role, at tier 1.
The four access levels in play
- Read (36 tools): among them
list_users,list_teams,list_roles,get_team,list_audit_logs,list_smart_tags,list_tagging_policies,list_notification_channels,get_budget_spend,get_cloud_account_permissions. Note the last: it returns the per-action IAM probe verdicts, so an assistant can tell you why a schedule will fail before it does. - Tier 1, metadata only (23 tools):
create_budget,update_budget,delete_budget,accept_smart_tag,revoke_smart_tag, the role and member tools above, the team tools such ascreate_teamandassign_resource_to_team, and validators such asvalidate_iac_policy. These change ZopNight’s own records. None of them touches a cloud resource. - Tier 2, reversible (33 tools): tagging, alerting, watch and IaC policies, notification
channels and subscriptions, integrations and unit metrics, for example
create_tagging_policy,update_tagging_policy,create_alerting_policyandcreate_notification_channel. - Tier 3, irreversible (3 tools):
delete_unit_metric,delete_all_unit_metric_valuesandensure_iac_ci.
Why budgets are tier 1 and not tier 0
A budget is a ZopNight record, so deleting one destroys no infrastructure. But budgets drive alerting, and an assistant that quietly raised a threshold would suppress the warning a human was relying on. Tier 1 is the smallest gate that makes that a deliberate choice.
Smart tags are proposals, not writes
accept_smart_tag and revoke_smart_tag act on ZopNight’s derived tags, virtual attributions
used for cost reporting. They are never written back to your cloud provider, so accepting one
changes how spend is attributed in reports and changes nothing in AWS, Azure or GCP.
Govern tools: common questions
Can an assistant grant itself more access?
Not beyond its user. Role and member tools such as create_role, add_org_member and update_team_member_role sit at tier 1, but every call runs with the live permissions of the user whose token the assistant holds, so it can change roles and membership only as far as that user could in the app. Org-level role assignment, organisation and cloud-account deletion, and credential reads have no tool at any tier.
Why is creating a budget tier 1 rather than read-only?
A budget is a ZopNight record, so deleting one destroys no infrastructure. But budgets drive alerting, and an assistant that quietly raised a threshold would suppress the warning a human was relying on. Tier 1 is the smallest gate that makes that a deliberate choice.
Does accepting a smart tag write a tag into my cloud account?
No. Smart tags are ZopNight's own derived attributions, used for cost reporting. Accepting one changes how spend is attributed in reports and changes nothing in AWS, Azure or GCP.