Use when: you want the catalog of named people from Photos face recognition — e.g. to discover exact person names before filtering query by person, or to see who appears most. Pass limit for the top-N; unidentified faces appear as _UNKNOWN_.\n
AI agents call list-persons to retrieve information from Apple Photos without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool queries and retrieves face recognition data from the Photos library without creating, modifying, deleting, or executing external operations. It is a straightforward data retrieval operation with no side effects. The blast radius of misuse is minimal—an attacker gains visibility into people recognized in photos, which is a privacy concern but not operationally dangerous.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'list-persons' and description explicitly states it retrieves "the catalog of named people from Photos face recognition" and allows discovery of "exact person names before filtering query by person".
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Use when: you want the catalog of named people from Photos face recognition — e.g. to discover exact person names before filtering query by person, or to see who appears most. Pass limit for the top-N; unidentified faces appear as _UNKNOWN_.\n. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Apple Photos MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Apple Photos MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for list-persons: 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 Apple Photos. Nothing to install.
list-persons 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 list-persons 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 list-persons. 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.
list-persons is provided by the Apple Photos MCP server (sweetrb/apple-photos-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
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