#tool-use
Every post tagged "tool-use".
76 posts · showing 1–10
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The Analytics Agent Answered "What Was Q3 Revenue?" From a Deprecated Table. Make It Name Its Source Before Its Number.
The SQL was valid, the arithmetic was right, and the number was still wrong, because the agent picked the table whose name looked most like the question. Here is how to make a data agent commit to a source you can check before it hands anyone a figure.
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The Invoice Tool Timed Out, So the Billing Agent Called It Again. The Customer Was Charged Twice. A Timeout Is Not a Failure.
A timeout tells the agent it stopped waiting, not that nothing happened. Here is how a reasonable-looking retry turned into a double charge, and the idempotency key that makes the retry safe.
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One Big update_task Tool or Three Small Ones? Your To-Do Agent Only Sees the Names and Descriptions
A to-do agent archived a task you meant to finish, and the tool was working fine. The model picks tools from a short menu of names and descriptions, so how you split that menu decides how often it picks wrong.
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The Expense Agent Logged "Rate limit exceeded" as a Vendor Name. Make Tool Errors Impossible to Mistake for Results.
When a tool returns its failure as a plain string, the model reads it like any other output and carries on. The fix lives in the tool's return shape, not in the prompt.
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The Refund Tool Capped Each Refund at $500. The Support Agent Issued Eleven $490 Refunds to One Customer.
A per-call limit only answers "is this action too big?" Agents fail on a different question: "is this sequence too big?" Here is how a guardrail that never fired still let the money leave, and the ledger check that would have stopped it.
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The Inbox Agent Said Nobody Had Replied. The Search Tool Had Returned Page One of Four.
An agent can't tell "there's nothing here" from "I only saw the first page" unless the tool tells it. Here is how to make a paginated tool announce its own incompleteness, and why claims of absence need a stricter rule than claims of presence.
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The Tool Call Failed on Step 3. Retry, Skip, or Replan? Decide by What the Failure Told You About the Plan.
A failed tool call carries two facts: the action didn't happen, and something you believed may be false. Agents act on the first and throw away the second — here's the one question that sorts retry from skip from replan, and how to put the answer in the error contract instead of the prompt.
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The Refund Tool Timed Out, the Agent Retried, and the Customer Got Paid Twice. Make Every Write Tool Idempotent.
A timeout tells the agent nothing about whether the write happened, and a retry is its most reasonable next move. The fix belongs in the tool, not in the prompt.
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The Analytics Agent Said Revenue Was Up 38%. The Join Had Counted Every Order Once Per Line Item.
A text-to-SQL agent that answers with a single number has hidden the one thing a reviewer needed to see. Here is how a fan-out join slipped through, and the grain checks that would have caught it before anyone got to the slide.
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The Agent Said It Booked the Meeting. Learn to Read One Turn: Text, Tool Call, Tool Result, and Which One Counts
An agent's reply can describe an action it never took. Once you can tell the three kinds of message in a transcript apart, you will know in ten seconds whether the calendar invite exists.