Adding tools to an agent is easy; making tool use reliable is the real engineering
victorialslocum · x · 2026-09-01
This thread covers the engineering of tool use in agent systems via function calling: the model emits structured output (function name + arguments), your system executes it, and results feed back into context—the core think/act/observe loop. Every step can fail: discovery—unclear descriptions make the model pick the wrong tool, and overloading context with too many tools buries the relevant one; argument formulation—the model must map natural-language requests onto exact function signatures like getweather(city, date). The takeaway: wiring up tools is trivial; making the loop reliable is where the actual engineering work lies.
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