Work with an assistant

Once an assistant is connected, you ask in plain words and it picks the MCP tools. The requests below are examples of what works well, not fixed commands; word them your own way. Each notes the MCP tools an assistant would typically use.

Find photos

Find my five-star photos from the X-T5 taken in June 2026.

The assistant turns this into DarkRay’s search syntax, here rating:5 camera:X-T5 date:2026-06, and calls search_photos. You can give the syntax yourself when you know it: label:red, flag:pick, kw:beach, lens:35mm, iso:>3200, type:raw, edited and -edited all work, as in the search row.

Find photos of a red boat at the harbor.

A content:"red boat" search finds photos by what they show. It works in the catalog DarkRay shows, once File › Build Content Index has indexed it.

Look before changing

Show me photo 1482, then a full-resolution crop of the eyes so we can judge focus.

get_preview returns the photo as edited, at a size up to 2048 pixels, or a region at full resolution. Asking the assistant to look first, and to look again after a change, gives far better results than editing blind.

Curate

Rate the sharpest frame of each burst in the Quick Collection four stars and flag it as a pick. Reject the rest.

Add the keywords “Lisbon” and “street” to everything from 2026-05-12, and put the picks in a new collection called “Lisbon: portfolio”.

These use update_photos and update_collection. Each request is one step in the grid’s Undo, named for what changed, for example Undo Rating, Keywords (assistant).

Edit

Read the edits of photo 2210. The shadows are blocked up: lift them and bring exposure up a third of a stop, then show me the result.

The assistant reads the field names and ranges with get_edits, changes them with set_edits, and looks with get_preview. An out-of-range value is refused with the range, so the assistant can correct itself.

Copy the color grading from photo 3101 to the other photos in this collection, then apply the Portra look at 60%.

This uses copy_edits with sections, list_presets and apply_preset. See Edit field names for what the assistant can change.

Tip

If you don’t like a change, press Ctrl+Z in the grid, or in Edit for the photo you have open. You can also ask the assistant to set the old values back, since it read them first.

Merge brackets

Find the exposure brackets among the RAWs from 2026-08-21 and merge each one to HDR with medium deghosting.

find_brackets groups the frames from their exposures and capture times, and merge_photos merges each group, one after another. A merge takes a minute or more, so the assistant gets a job back and checks on it with get_jobs. Each result is a new EXR photo stacked on its frames. Panoramas aren’t detected; tell the assistant which frames belong together, or let it group them by capture time and previews.

Export

Export the picks in the “Lisbon: portfolio” collection as JPEGs, 2048 pixels on the long edge, quality 90, to D:\Exports\Lisbon.

export_photos takes the Export dialog’s settings by name; anything you don’t mention keeps the last export’s. A file with the same name is never overwritten: the export takes the next free name.

Technical details: what an assistant can't do

The MCP tools change only the Base layer’s edits; layers and masks are out of reach. Nothing is deleted, moved or renamed, and collections aren’t deleted. Changes go only to the catalog DarkRay shows; reading works in any open catalog. A request that would change the photo open in Edit while you drag a control, paint a stroke or the photo loads waits for that to end, and is refused after 20 s.