The names you give your tools are crucial, as they are added to the LLM prompt that powers the agent using your tool. Names significantly impact performance, as agents consider these strongly when deciding how and when to use your tools.
Tool descriptions should let users know what a tool will do.Purpose statement: Clearly describe the tool’s objective using active voice. Explain what the tool does, not how it does it. Include the primary use case or purpose of your tool.
Using LLMs to optimize tool names and descriptions
If you’re unsure how to create the optimal name and description for your tool, we recommend that you use ChatGPT-4o to help you write.Enter what you currently have for a tool name and description and provide some information about the agent that will use your tool.Example prompt: “You are being provided a tool name and description that might be used by an AI agent to perform research on various prospects.Tool name: Google searchDescription: Search the internetWhen given the tool name and description, provide a better name and description that will allow the agent to use this tool correctly. The tool searches Google for given a query.The tool name needs to be more action based and focused.”
The agent prompt for your tool serves as a crucial guide to help AI agents use it effectively, as agents are powered by LLMs.It is vitally important you include an agent prompt when setting up your tool.
Tool description: Get a set of recent LinkedIn posts by a company or person.
Prompt for agent to use: “Use this tool when the user requests information about recent LinkedIn activity for a specific company or person. Provide accurate results by ensuring you input a valid LinkedIn profile URL and only return posts from the past three months.”
Use clear, actionable, and descriptive input names. The input name should be self-explanatory, enabling users or agents to understand what the input is for.
When writing input descriptions, make sure they provide clear, concise and actionable guidance for the user or agent. Good input descriptions should reflect:
Context: Explain how the input is relevant to the tool’s goal.
Example: “Provide the URL of the blog page to extract content from.”
Requirements: Specify what format or type of input is needed.
Example: “Enter a full URL, including https://, to ensure proper parsing.”
Scope: Define the boundaries or constraints for the input.
Example: “Include only URLs from the company’s official domain.”
Purpose: Indicate why the input is essential and what it will achieve.
Example: “This helps identify the blog content relevant to your analysis.”
Description: Extract website content as markdown including title and publication date given a specific website url.
Input parameters:
Input name: Blog URL
Description: The official blog URL of the company you’re analyzing.
Variable: blog_url
Input name: Objective of scraping
Description: Extract content, titles and publication dates of all blog posts published in the last six months. Ignore promotional or sponsored articles.
Step names act as function identifiers. You should prioritize clarity and simplicity. Like tool names, include an action and object, and system if using an integration.