tool use
This is the tool use tag archive on Will's Journal: every published post that shares this tag, listed in one place.
It is a collection page, not a topic essay — scan the cluster here instead of filtering the full journal index.
Which posts are tagged tool use?
AI Agents When should the agent escalate instead of retrying
Escalate on auth, policy, ambiguous intent, repeated same-tool fail, and money movement. Retry only transient, idempotent tool errors with a hard bound.
AI Agents Why is my agent 10× more expensive than the chatbot demo
Agents cost more than the chatbot demo because each tool turn re-bills growing context, schemas, and retries. 10× is a complaint to diagnose, not a statistic.
AI Agents Who is accountable when an agent acts (refunds, emails, writes)
A named human owns every agent refund, email, and write. Policy gates sit before irreversible tools; the model is not a person and cannot absorb the blame.
AI Agents Why Agents Loop on Failed Tools: No-Progress Detection Beats Longer Prompts
Agents loop on failed tools because the harness never detects no-progress. Fingerprint calls, honor retryable:false, cap turns, terminate with a reason code.
AI Agents Agentic Systems: An Operating Manual for Multi-Agent Work That Ships
An agentic system is evaluators, policy gates, sandboxes, and kill switches — not a chat window — so production tool work survives contact with real data.
AI Agents How do I stop an agent from doing something destructive
Stop destructive agent actions with a blast-radius table, an allowlisted tool set, and dual control on money and delete, enforced in code before the tool runs.
AI Agents Why did loading all my MCP tools blow the context window
Every MCP tool schema you attach is prompt tokens. Loading the whole catalog fills the window before the task starts—send a job-sized subset or a router.
AI Agents MCP vs Native Function Calling: Portability Tax vs Shortest Loop
Native function calling wins for one app's short tool loop; MCP earns the tax when tools must be shared and governed across hosts—not a LangChain swap.
AI Agents Prompt Injection for Tool Agents: Stop Text from Becoming Actions
Stop prompt injection by isolating untrusted email and tickets from write tools, then gating every proposed call in code — never in the system prompt.
AI Agents Idempotent Agent Tool Writes: Retries Without Double Emails or Double Charges
Timeouts are unknown, not failed. Mint one runtime idempotency key per write intent and reuse it across retries so you cannot double-email or double-charge.
AI Agents Tool Schemas Agents Follow: Descriptions, Enums, and Killing the Omnibus Tool
Agents invent arguments when schemas are vague. Write JSON Schema like agent UX—enums, required fields, property descriptions—and kill the do_anything tool.
AI Agents Pre-Execution Policy Gates: The Kill Switch That Lives Outside the Prompt
Your agent’s kill switch is a pre-execution policy gate outside the prompt: allow, deny, or pending-approval before side effects — fail closed on outages.
What should you know about this tag archive?
What is this tag archive?
This is the tool use tag archive on Will's Journal: every published post that shares this tag, listed in one place.
Is this a guide to the topic, or a list of posts?
A list of posts. This page is a collection, not a topic essay — the 12 posts below are the tool use cluster on Will's Journal.