Tool Calling

A model that can only produce text is limited to what it absorbed in training. Give it a way to ask for things (a search, a database lookup, a calculator, an API, a business system) and the pattern changes. Instead of generating an answer, the model generates a request: which tool, with what arguments. The application runs the tool and hands the result back as more text. The model reads it and continues.

This is the hinge on which the rest of the course turns. From here on the model is not just answering, it is deciding what to do. And the moment a model decides what to do, a designer has to decide how much of that deciding to allow.