n8n-io/n8n · error

Agent listing is not available on this instance.

Error message

Agent listing is not available on this instance.

What it means

Capability guard inside the agents listing tool: the orchestration context does not expose the agent-artifact service on this instance (feature not enabled or unavailable), so the read-only listing operation cannot be served and aborts instead of returning empty results.

Solutions

  1. Do not call the agents tool on this instance; answer without listing agents
  2. Ask the user for the agent name/id directly, or enable the agent artifact feature on the instance
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/@n8n/instance-ai/src/tools/agents.tool.ts:47 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of n8n-io/n8n@5ac6606e81 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1fd569e0c258a2d4. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at packages/@n8n/instance-ai/src/tools/agents.tool.ts:47

		}),
	),
});

export function createAgentsTool(context: OrchestrationContext) {
	return new Tool(DOMAIN_TOOL_IDS.AGENTS)
		.description(
			'List the n8n Agent artifacts in this project — id, name, published state, and last ' +
				'update, most recently updated first. Use it to answer questions about existing ' +
				'agents and to find the `agentId` to pass to `build-agent` when the user wants to ' +
				'edit an agent that was not built in this conversation. Read-only; agents are ' +
				'created and edited via `build-agent`.',
		)
		.input(agentsInputSchema)
		.output(agentsOutputSchema)
		.handler(async () => {
			const delegate = context.domainContext?.builderDelegate;
			if (!delegate) {
				throw new Error('Agent listing is not available on this instance.');
			}
			const agents = await delegate.listAgents();
			return { count: agents.length, agents };
		})
		.build();
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 5ac6606e81)