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Tool Use

Uso di Strumenti

Tool use is the paradigm where a model, instead of answering only from internal knowledge, can invoke external tools, calculators, search engines, code interpreters, business APIs, to do what it cannot do alone or to access fresh data. Function calling is the technical mechanism; tool use is the overall strategy. Example prompt: "You have these tools: [calculate], [web_search], [read_db]. For each request, pick the right tool and use it before answering. Request: how many working days are between two dates?" The model picks [calculate] instead of guessing.

Definition

Use it when the task needs numeric precision, real-time data or actions on the outside world. Delegating to tools cuts hallucinations and shifts reliability from the model to deterministic components.

Related terms

• Function Calling
• ReAct (Reasoning + Acting)
• Grounding
• Structured Output
• Reflexion

More in Prompting

• Prompt
• Prompting
• Role Assignment
• Zero-shot
• Few-shot
• Chain of Thought
• Prompt Engineering
• Output Format

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