App Tools extensions let your app expose custom tools that Aria can discover and invoke on behalf of Wix users. When a Wix user chats with Aria about something your app's tools can do, Aria calls your tools with the relevant input to take action or get a response it can use to provide an informed answer. Any functionality your app can perform, you can expose as a tool, including retrieving data, running workflows, completing actions, and calling 3rd-party APIs and services.
For example, a shipping carrier app can expose a package-tracking tool. When a Wix user asks Aria "Show me the statuses of my customer orders.", Aria identifies the appropriate tool, invokes it, and returns the shipment status. Learn more about how Aria interacts with your app.
With App Tools, Aria can:
- Create or retrieve an invoice through a 3rd-party invoicing service.
- Check inventory for a product.
- Place a fulfillment order with a dropshipping provider your app uses.
A tool is a method in your app that performs an action. You give each tool a name so Aria can identify which method to call. To expose a tool, you must set up the following extensions:
- App Tools extension: Declares the tools your app exposes, including each tool's name, description, and optional request and response schemas. Learn more About App Tools Extensions in Build Apps.
- Tools Provider service plugin: The runtime handler Wix calls when Aria invokes a tool. This is where you implement the method logic for each tool. Learn more About the Tools Provider Service Plugin in the API reference.
Tip:
Use the App Tools skill to give your AI agent the context it needs to scaffold and implement App Tools and the Tools Provider service plugin.
The development path determines how you add App Tools:
- Sites: Don't add App Tools directly. To give Aria custom tools in a site's dashboard, create a private app that declares the App Tools extension and the Tools Provider service plugin, and install that app on the site.
- Wix-managed headless projects:
- Full Wix integration (Astro): Add App Tools as backend extensions through the CLI. The CLI scaffolds both the declaration extension and the Tools Provider service plugin. See Add App Tools Extensions with the CLI in Go Headless.
- Other frameworks: Don't support App Tools directly. Follow the same approach as self-managed headless projects.
- Self-managed headless projects: Configure the App Tools extension and the Tools Provider extension in the app dashboard, and implement the
runTool handler on your own backend. See About the Tools Provider Service Plugin in the API reference.
- Wix-managed apps: Add App Tools through the CLI. The CLI scaffolds both the declaration extension and the Tools Provider service plugin. See Add App Tools Extensions with the CLI in Build Apps.
- Self-managed apps: Configure the App Tools extension and the Tools Provider extension in the app dashboard, and implement the
runTool handler on your own backend. See About the Tools Provider Service Plugin in the API reference.
- Blocks apps: Don't support App Tools extensions in their backend. An app that uses Blocks for UI can still expose tools by adding a CLI or self-hosted component for the App Tools extension and the Tools Provider service plugin.