Low Risk

context

Get full context about a topic: the entity, its observations, relationships, and related entities. Follows relationship graph to discover connected information.

How to control context ↓

What context does on Hippocampus

AI agents call context to retrieve information from Hippocampus without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.

Low Risk

Why context needs a policy

This tool performs a query operation that retrieves and assembles existing data from a knowledge graph without modifying, creating, or deleting any information. The ability to traverse relationships and discover connected information is a read-only operation. While it accesses a memory/context store, there is no side effect or irreversible action, making it a classic Read category tool with low severity.

From the tool's definition Tool retrieves context about a topic by following relationship graphs to discover connected information. Uses verbs like 'Get' and 'discover' indicating data retrieval with no modification or deletion capability.

Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access context gives an agent:

How to control context

PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and Hippocampus, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for context:

policy.json
{
  "version": "1",
  "default": "deny",
  "tools": {
    "context": {}
  }
}

context is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.

  1. Create a free account and register Hippocampus — nothing to install.
  2. Add this policy — paste it, or build it visually.
  3. Point your MCP client (Claude, Cursor, anything) at your gateway URL.
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Free to start. No card required.

Related tools and policies

Go deeper

Questions about context

What does the context tool do? +

Get full context about a topic: the entity, its observations, relationships, and related entities. Follows relationship graph to discover connected information. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Hippocampus MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.

How do I enforce a policy on context? +

Register the Hippocampus MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for context: 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 Hippocampus. Nothing to install.

What risk level is context? +

context is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.

Can I rate-limit context? +

Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the context 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.

How do I block context completely? +

Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for context. 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.

What MCP server provides context? +

context is provided by the Hippocampus MCP server (karrolcia/hippocampus). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.

Enforce policy on every Hippocampus tool call.

Start from Hippocampus, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.

Free to start. No card required.

11 Hippocampus tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.

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