Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the PCP PMWEBAPI to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the PCP PMWEBAPI, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fpcp.io%2Fpcp" | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fpcp.io%2Fpcp" | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with PCP PMWEBAPI API.

Fetch real-time values for any PCP performance metric from instrumented hosts

Query historical time series data with filtering by label and time range

Search for metrics by name, description, or instance domain via full-text index

Browse the metric namespace hierarchy with children and descriptor lookups

Retrieve instance domain members for multi-instance metrics

GET STARTED

Start building with PCP PMWEBAPI API

Explore with Jentic One

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use PCP PMWEBAPI API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Real-Time Infrastructure Monitoring

Fetch live performance metrics from PCP-instrumented Linux hosts. The PMAPI endpoints return current values for any metric in the PCP namespace (CPU, memory, disk, network, process-level counters). Agents create a polling context via GET /pmapi/context, then fetch specific metrics via GET /pmapi/fetch with metric names. This enables real-time dashboards and alerting without installing additional agents.

Create a PMAPI context via GET /pmapi/context with hostspec=localhost, then fetch the current value of kernel.all.cpu.idle via GET /pmapi/fetch

Time Series Analysis

Query historical performance data stored in PCP archives for capacity planning and trend analysis. The Series API provides time-windowed queries with label-based filtering across all archived metrics. Agents use GET /series/query with a PCP query expression to retrieve timestamped values, enabling performance regression detection and resource forecasting.

Query the time series for disk.dev.read over the last 3600 seconds via GET /series/query with the appropriate series expression

Metric Discovery and Search

Find relevant performance metrics across a PCP deployment using full-text search. The Search API indexes metric names, help text, and instance domain descriptions. Agents query GET /search/text with keywords to discover available metrics without knowing exact namespace paths, enabling self-service monitoring setup.

Search for all network-related metrics via GET /search/text with query='network throughput' and return the matching metric names and descriptions

AI Agent Infrastructure Monitoring via Jentic

AI agents use the PCP PMWEBAPI through Jentic to monitor infrastructure health, query performance metrics, and detect anomalies on PCP-instrumented hosts. Jentic handles Basic authentication and host targeting so agents can query multiple PCP instances from a single intent search without managing connection state.

Search Jentic for 'fetch CPU metrics from PCP', load the schema for GET /pmapi/fetch, and execute with metric names=['kernel.all.cpu.user', 'kernel.all.cpu.idle']

Key Endpoints

21 endpoints — performance co-pilot (pcp) pmwebapi provides rest api access to system performance metrics, time series data, full-text search, and live host monitoring via the pmproxy daemon.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/pmapi/context

Create a PMAPI context for a host or archive

GET

/pmapi/fetch

Fetch current metric values

GET

/pmapi/metric

Look up metric descriptors

GET

/pmapi/children

Browse metric namespace hierarchy

GET

/series/query

Query historical time series data

GET

/search/text

Full-text search for metrics

GET

/metrics

Export metrics in Prometheus format

GET

/series/values

Retrieve time series values by series ID

GET

/pmapi/context

Create a PMAPI context for a host or archive

GET

/pmapi/fetch

Fetch current metric values

GET

/pmapi/metric

Look up metric descriptors

GET

/pmapi/children

Browse metric namespace hierarchy

GET

/series/query

Query historical time series data

GET

/search/text

Full-text search for metrics

GET

/metrics

Export metrics in Prometheus format

GET

/series/values

Retrieve time series values by series ID

Why Jentic?

What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.

Setup

Wiring the PCP PMWEBAPI by hand means managing HTTP basic auth against your own pmproxy host on port 44322, establishing a metric context, and constructing time series queries yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import PCP PMWEBAPI from the API Directory, store the credentials once, and your agent calls it.

Permission scoping

PCP PMWEBAPI passes its metric names and query terms as request parameters rather than in the URL path, so scope the agent by the operations it needs, such as fetching metrics, querying a time series, or discovering metrics by text search. You choose that set, so only the read operations you list are available to the agent.

Credential isolation

Your PCP basic auth credentials are stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. They never enter the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'fetch CPU metrics from a server' or 'query a metric time series', and Jentic returns the matching PCP PMWEBAPI operation with its input schema targeting the configured pmproxy so the agent calls the right endpoint without reading the reference docs.

FAQs

Specific to using PCP PMWEBAPI API through Jentic.

What authentication does the PCP PMWEBAPI use?

The PCP PMWEBAPI uses HTTP Basic Authentication when configured in pmproxy. By default, pmproxy runs without authentication on port 44322. When auth is enabled, you provide username and password via the standard Authorization header. Through Jentic, credentials are injected automatically into each request.

Can I query historical metric data with the PCP PMWEBAPI?

Yes. The Series API endpoints (GET /series/query, GET /series/values) provide access to historical data stored in PCP archives. You submit a query expression specifying the metric name and time window, and the API returns timestamped values from the archive.

What are the rate limits for the PCP PMWEBAPI?

PCP PMWEBAPI is self-hosted via the pmproxy daemon, so there are no vendor-imposed rate limits. Performance depends on the host resources and the number of metrics being served. Each GET /pmapi/fetch call reads directly from the PMDA (Performance Metrics Domain Agent) for the requested metric.

How do I search for metrics through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'find PCP performance metrics', load the schema for GET /search/text, and execute with a query parameter like 'disk throughput'. Jentic handles authentication and returns matching metric names with descriptions and instance domains.

Can I export PCP metrics to Prometheus?

Yes. The GET /metrics endpoint exports all available PCP metric values in Prometheus exposition format. This enables Prometheus scrapers to collect data from PCP-instrumented hosts without installing additional exporters.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the PCP PMWEBAPI?

Yes. Because your Jentic One instance is self-hosted, you decide which PCP PMWEBAPI operations the agent may call, and only the read operations you list are available to it. For example, you can allow it to fetch current metric values with GET /pmapi/fetch while withholding time series queries via GET /series/query or full-text discovery via GET /search/text. The agent cannot reach any operation you leave out, and your basic auth credentials are supplied at execution time rather than exposed to the agent.

PCP PMWEBAPI

Name: PCP PMWEBAPI API
Brand: PCP PMWEBAPI
Availability: InStock

Community OpenAPI document · agent-readyDeveloper ToolsMonitoring Observabilitybasic21 EndpointsREST

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For Agents

Query real-time performance metrics, search for metric names, retrieve time series data, and browse metric hierarchies from PCP-instrumented hosts.

Use for: I need to fetch current CPU utilization from a PCP host, I want to query historical disk I/O metrics over the past hour, Search for all memory-related performance metrics, List the children of a metric namespace node

Not supported: Does not handle metric alerting, dashboard rendering, or log aggregation - use for raw metric collection, time series queries, and metric discovery only.

Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) PMWEBAPI provides REST API access to system performance metrics, time series data, full-text search, and live host monitoring via the pmproxy daemon. It exposes the PMAPI for querying real-time metric values, the Series API for historical time series queries, and the Search API for discovering metrics by name, description, or instance domain. The API runs on port 44322 and serves performance data from any PCP-instrumented host.

Jentic One on Github View OpenAPI Document