Find utility providers when someone is moving to a Texas address or setting up utilities at a new home. Covers nine utility types: electricity, internet, gas, water, sewer (city wastewater), trash, propane (rural / off-grid alternative to natural gas), septic (rural / off-grid alternative to city...
Part of the Utilify server.
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AI agents call search_utility_providers to retrieve information from Utilify without modifying any data. This is common in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows where the agent needs context before taking action. Because read operations don't change state, they are generally safe to allow without restrictions -- but you may still want rate limits to control API costs.
Even though search_utility_providers only reads data, uncontrolled read access can leak sensitive information or rack up API costs. An agent caught in a retry loop could make thousands of calls per minute. A rate limit gives you a safety net without blocking legitimate use.
Read-only tools are safe to allow by default. No rate limit needed unless you want to control costs.
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"search_utility_providers": {}
}
}See the full Utilify policy for all 8 tools.
These attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access search_utility_providers gives an agent. Each links to the full case and the policy that stops it:
Other read tools across the catalogue. The same approach applies to each: allow, with a rate cap to control cost.
Find utility providers when someone is moving to a Texas address or setting up utilities at a new home. Covers nine utility types: electricity, internet, gas, water, sewer (city wastewater), trash, propane (rural / off-grid alternative to natural gas), septic (rural / off-grid alternative to city sewer), and home security. Use when the user says things like 'I'm moving to Houston next month', 'I just bought a house in Austin and need to set up power', 'what's the cheapest electricity in Dallas', 'who provides internet at this apartment in San Antonio', or rural-address questions like 'I'm moving to a ranch in Bandera, what do I do for gas and sewer' (answer: propane + septic). Returns available providers with a classified plan type (fixed / free_nights / solar_buyback / 100_renewable / etc.) and whether the cheapest plan is rental-friendly; pass tenancy='rent' to prefer short-contract plans or tenancy='own' to surface solar-buyback options. Caveats: (1) water results may include many PWS rows within a ZIP's county radius — filter to primaryForZip === true for the single canonical provider likely to serve the parcel. (2) Trash providers in TX suburbs include metadata.contractedHauler (Republic Services / Community Waste Disposal / Waste Management / Best Trash / Texas Disposal Systems / Waste Connections) — surface this so users know the actual pickup company in addition to the city dept. (3) Propane and septic appear at all TX ZIPs including urban ones; in cities with natural gas + city sewer, treat them as alternative options rather than primary. (4) Sewer is city wastewater (urban); septic is on-site (rural / unincorporated). (5) For electricity in Texas, results are filtered to retail providers (REPs) that actually serve the address's TDU — Oncor (DFW), CenterPoint (Houston), AEP TX Central (Corpus / RGV), AEP TX North (Abilene / San Angelo), or TNMP (scattered). Agents do not need to filter by TDU themselves. The TDU slug is exposed as tdu per electricity provider so agents can explain to the user why the list is shorter than they might expect (e.g. ~20 REPs at a Houston address vs. ~47 statewide). At municipal-utility ZIPs (Austin Energy, CPS Energy, El Paso Electric) the only electricity provider returned is the muni; REPs cannot sell power there.. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Utilify MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Utilify MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for search_utility_providers: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Utilify. Nothing to install.
search_utility_providers is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the search_utility_providers rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for search_utility_providers. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
search_utility_providers is provided by the Utilify MCP server (https://utilify.io/mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Deterministic rules across all 8 Utilify tools. Per-identity grants. Full audit log. Live in minutes. Nothing to install.
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