lintai docs

Appearance

Rule Reference

SEC315lintai-ai-securitystabletool_jsonwarn

Tool descriptors: duplicate tool names

MCP-style tool descriptor collection contains duplicate tool names

Provider
lintai-ai-security
Surface
tool_json
Scope
per_file
Tier
stable
Severity
warn
Confidence
high
Detection
structural
Remediation
message_only

Activation Model

Preset Membership

This rule is part of the builtin activation graph through these preset memberships.

basemembership
mcpmembership

Lifecycle

Stable Lifecycle Contract

State

stable_gated

Graduation rationale

Checks structured MCP-style tool collections for duplicate names that can shadow one another.

Deterministic signal basis

ToolJsonSignals duplicate-name detection over MCP-style tool collections.

Malicious corpus
tool-json-duplicate-tool-names
Benign corpus
tool-json-unique-tool-names
structured evidence required remediation reviewed
Canonical note

Structural stable rule intended as a high-precision check with deterministic evidence.

Nearby Signals

Related Rules

SEC314Tool descriptor: missing machine fieldsMCP-style tool descriptor is missing required machine fieldstool_jsonstable
SEC316OpenAI strict schema: missing additionalProperties falseOpenAI strict tool schema omits recursive additionalProperties: falsetool_jsonstable
SEC317OpenAI strict schema: properties not all requiredOpenAI strict tool schema does not require every declared propertytool_jsonstable
SEC318Anthropic strict schema: missing additionalProperties falseAnthropic strict tool input schema omits additionalProperties: falsetool_jsonstable

Why It Matters ​

Duplicate tool names create ambiguity in machine-consumed tool catalogs. One tool can shadow another, or clients can behave inconsistently about which definition wins.

What Triggers ​

SEC315 applies to MCP-style tool descriptor collections and triggers when the same tool name appears more than once in the parsed collection.

Example that triggers:

json
[
  { "name": "list_clusters", "inputSchema": { "type": "object", "properties": {}, "additionalProperties": false } },
  { "name": "list_clusters", "inputSchema": { "type": "object", "properties": {}, "additionalProperties": false } }
]

False Positives ​

This is a deterministic structural check over parsed tool names. If duplicate names are intentional, the safer fix is still to make the identifiers unique and keep aliases in descriptive fields instead.

Remediation ​

Rename the duplicated tool so each exported machine identifier is unique.