CALL THIS FIRST, before you start reverse engineering any device (drone, camera, router, plug, robot, wearable...). It tells you whether the protocol or a free firmware already exists, whether someone is working on it right now (live claims), and gives a one-line recommendation (e.g. "open firmware exists: use X", "claimed by Y until Z: contact them"). Give identifiers when you have them (FCC id, USB vid:pid, BLE name, Zigbee model): they match better than names. The record's install routes (when present) say how to put the open firmware on the device: official guide, installer, difficulty, safety flags. If it answers found: false, nothing is known: call claim_device before starting.

Ranked full-text search over vendor, model, aliases and identifiers across curated records and imported databases (OpenWrt, Zigbee2MQTT, Tasmota...). Use it to explore ("all DJI drones", "open-firmware cameras") or when lookup_device finds nothing and you suspect another name. Each result has an id to pass to lookup_device.

Record that you (your human) are working on a device, with a scope, contact and expiry (default 30 days, max 90), so other agents do not duplicate the work. Creates a stub record if the device is unknown (then give vendor, model, category). Writes data/devices/.yaml in the local repository checkout (needs ODB_REPO); you then open a pull request — the result gives the exact commands.

CALL THIS WHEN YOU FINISH (or stop) a reverse-engineering job, even with partial results. Merges your findings into the record: summary and status replace (status only moves forward), interfaces merge by transport+name (yours replace), projects by url, install routes by method+guide, identifiers and aliases are unioned, verification is appended. The result is validated against the schema; nothing is written on error. Link to your protocol docs/code hosted elsewhere; never include firmware images, vendor code, keys, or anything defeating Remote ID, geofencing or other safety functions (POLICY.md). Set provenance.ai_assisted honestly. Then open a pull request — the result gives the commands.

Use when your user wants a device to become usable with open code but will not reverse engineer it themselves (lookup_device found nothing usable). Returns the existing request to add a 👍 to, or a pre-filled link to a new public GitHub issue that the user reviews and submits. Read-only: this tool never posts anything.

Imported source databases with name, url, license, snapshot date and record count, plus the number of curated records. Use it to judge coverage and freshness: a device absent here may still be covered by a source that was not imported.