tool-design

Tool description engineering is the practice of writing clear, concise, and actionable descriptions for agent tools. It ensures tools have a single, unambiguous purpose to minimize cognitive load and improve agent selection accuracy.

Design agent tools by applying the consolidation principle to reduce tool proliferation, ensuring each tool has a single clear purpose. Optimize response formats and design actionable error messages to guide agent recovery.

Actionable error messages for agent tools provide clear guidance for recovery rather than just stating the failure. This involves designing responses that explicitly tell the agent how to resolve the encountered error.

The best way to organize agent tool collections is applying the consolidation principle, merging related functions into single tools to manage proliferation. This ensures tools remain well-organized and easy for agents to navigate.

Test agent tool designs by evaluating them against established design principles and criteria. This involves checking tool description clarity, response format optimization, and error message actionability to ensure performance.

Agents struggle with tool selection when tool descriptions lack clarity or multiple tools have overlapping purposes. Applying unambiguous tool design and the consolidation principle reduces cognitive load and improves selection accuracy.