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Tool Store

The Tool Store is the central registry for discovering, evaluating, and managing reusable computational assets in FLNet.
It provides access to global tools, user-private tools, trained models, and workflows, enabling users to compose and execute data-driven analyses in a consistent and reproducible manner.

This page serves as a reference overview of the Tool Store and its core concepts.

Conceptual Overview​

The Tool Store aggregates different types of executable artifacts under a unified interface:

  • Tools
    Executable, containerized applications that perform a specific computation (e.g. data transformation, model training, inference).

  • Models
    Pre-trained tools. Conceptually, models are tools whose primary artifact is a trained model that can be reused without retraining.

  • Workflows
    Pipelines composed of multiple tools, defining a structured sequence of execution steps.

All tools available in the Tool Store are either:

  • Global tools, accessible to all users, or
  • Private tools, visible only to the owning user.

Browsing the Tool Store​

The Tool Store presents all available entries as cards in a searchable and filterable list.

Each tool card displays:

  • Name
  • Short description
  • Rating
  • Tags
  • Tool type (Tool, Model, or Workflow)
  • Version information

Search and Filtering​

Users can efficiently explore the Tool Store using:

  • A search field to query by name, description, or tag
  • Filter panels to refine results by:
    • Tool type (Tool, Model, Workflow)
    • Rating
    • Tags
    • Visibility (global or private)

Sorting options allow ordering by relevance, name, or rating.

Ratings and Tags​

Ratings​

  • Any user can rate a tool.
  • Ratings are visible on tool cards and can be used as a filter criterion.
  • Ratings provide a lightweight signal for tool quality and community adoption.

Tags​

  • Tags are assigned based on tool metadata and export-related classifications.
  • They provide contextual information such as:
    • Intended usage
    • Data compatibility
    • Execution characteristics

Tags can be combined with search and rating filters to narrow down relevant tools.

Managing Tools​

The Tool Store allows users to:

  • Browse all available tools and workflows
  • Distinguish between global and private tools
  • Compare tools based on metadata, ratings, and tags

Actions such as installing tools into projects or starting executions are accessible from the Tool Store interface, but are documented in the respective project and experiment sections.

Scope and Limitations​

This page focuses exclusively on the Tool Store itself:

  • It does not describe individual tool detail pages.
  • It does not cover execution, monitoring, or configuration workflows in detail.

For related topics, see:

  • docs/frontend/experiments.md
  • docs/frontend/connectors.md

Summary​

The Tool Store acts as the discovery and entry point for reusable computational assets in FLNet.
By unifying tools, trained models, and workflows under a single interface with rich metadata, ratings, and filtering, it enables users to efficiently identify suitable building blocks for their analytical tasks.