Building Tools
Design tools that agents can use effectively
🔑 Key Concepts
- Tool design principles — One responsibility, clear input/output, idempotent when possible, descriptive names and docs.
- Composite tools — Instead of 'get_user' + 'get_orders' + 'format_email', create 'send_order_summary_email'. Fewer steps, fewer errors.
- Input validation — The model might pass wrong types. Validate in the tool function before executing.
- Caching — Cache tool results for identical inputs. Saves time and money on repeated queries.
💡 Practice: Try implementing each concept yourself before moving on. Reading about RAG and building RAG are very different things.