This seems to be an important article.

However it uses various terms that I'm not sure of the definition for.

E.g. the word "Tool".

How can I learn about the definitions of these words? Will reading prior articles in the series help? Please advise.

▲ tptacek 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Ordinarily:

   you> what's going on?
   > It's going great --- how can I help you today?

Tool calls:

   you> [json blob of available "tools": "ls", "grep", "cat"]
   you> what's going on?
   > [json blob selecting "ls"]
   (you) presumably run "ls"
   you> [json blob of "ls" output]
   > [json blob selecting "cat foo.c"]
   (you) dump "foo.c"
   you> [json blob of "cat foo.c"]
   > I can see that we're in a C project that does XYZ...

The key thing is just: tools are just a message/conversation abstraction LLMs are trained to adhere to: they know to spit out a standardized "tool call" JSON, and they know to have multi-round conversations with sets of different "tools" (whichever ones are made available to them) to build up context to answer questions with.

That's the whole thing.

▲ jcheng 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here's my attempt at explaining tool calling:

https://youtu.be/owDd1CJ17uQ?si=Z2bldI8IssG7rGON&t=1330

It's an _incredibly_ important concept to understand if you have even a passing interest in LLMs. You need to understand it if you want to have any kind of mental model for how LLM-powered agents are even possible.

	▲	profsummergig 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you, I watched it. The key takeaway I got was that the client (browser, I suppose) does the actual usage of such tools. The user hands over control of these tools to the AI (and the tool-use happens in the background so it might look to the user like the AI is the one doing the actual usage of the tools).

▲ nativeit 8 days ago | parent | prev [-]

tool (n)

One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used. A fool. A cretin. Characterized by low intelligence and/or self-esteem.

Disclaimer: I only cite definitions from Urban Dictionary, but I remain firmly convinced they are correct definitions in context.

	▲	1123581321 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		You should make a Chrome plugin that fills in Urban Dictionary definitions of first names while you’re on LinkedIn.