LLM Tool Use

LLM: Large Language Model

Large language model tool use examines how models decide when tools are needed, choose among them, provide valid arguments, and use returned results to complete tasks. Common approaches include prompting frameworks such as ReAct, supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning on tool-call trajectories, retrieval and filtering for large tool catalogs, and planning with execution feedback or memory. Benchmarks such as BFCL, AppWorld, and MCP-based evaluations test structured calls, multi-step workflows, and real-world tool interactions. A central challenge is making tool use reliable and efficient: tools can improve computation and access to current information, but unnecessary calls, bad arguments, misleading results, and failures in long-horizon reasoning can make performance worse.

Latest papers

295 papers47 papers in the last four weeks, up 38% on the four weeks before. 0.3% of all new papers.

BioTool: A Comprehensive Tool-Calling Dataset for Enhancing Biomedical Capabilities of Large Language Models
May 7, 2026Xin Gao, Ruiyi Zhang, Meixi Du +2LLM Fine-Tuning LLM Tool Use
UC San Diego · MBZUAI
Curated AI beats frontier LLMs at pharma asset discovery
May 6, 2026Łukasz Kidziński, Kevin ThomasLLM Evaluation Healthcare
Gosset Research
LLMs with in-context learning for Algorithmic Theoretical Physics
May 6, 2026Anamaria Hell, Leander ThieleIn-Context Learning LLM Tool Use
Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, and Center for Data-Driven Discovery, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
From Knowledge to Action: Outcomes of the 2025 Large Language Model (LLM) Hackathon for Applications in Materials Science and Chemistry
May 4, 2026Aritra Roy, Kevin Shen, Andrew MacBride +350Multi-Agent LLM Systems AI Agents for Scientific Discovery
TSCG: Deterministic Tool-Schema Compilation for Agentic LLM Deployments
May 4, 2026Furkan SakizliTool-Augmented Language Model Agents LLM Tool Use
Independent Researcher
To Call or Not to Call: A Framework to Assess and Optimize LLM Tool Calling
May 1, 2026Qinyuan Wu, Soumi Das, Mahsa Amani +5Tool-Use Evaluation LLM Tool Use
Max Planck Institute for Software Systems · Ruhr University Bochum · UAR RC Trust
Are Tools All We Need? Unveiling the Tool-Use Tax in LLM Agents
Apr 30, 2026Kaituo Zhang, Zhen Xiong, Mingyu Zhong +4Tool-Augmented Language Model Agents Agentic Reasoning
University of Houston · University of Southern California · 3New York University +2
FAMA: Failure-Aware Meta-Agentic Framework for Open-Source LLMs in Interactive Tool Use Environments
Apr 28, 2026Amir Saeidi, Venkatesh Mishra, Souradeep Mukhopadhyay +4AI Agent Reliability Multi-Agent LLM Systems
Arizona State University · Cisco Research
Uncertainty Quantification for LLM Function-Calling
Apr 24, 2026Zihuiwen Ye, Lukas Aichberger, Michael Kirchhof +5Uncertainty Quantification LLM Tool Use
University of Oxford · Apple
Tool Attention Is All You Need: Dynamic Tool Gating and Lazy Schema Loading for Eliminating the MCP/Tools Tax in Scalable Agentic Workflows
Apr 23, 2026Anuj Sadani, Deepak KumarGated Attention LLM Tool Use
How Consistent Are LLM Agents? Measuring Behavioral Reproducibility in Multi-Step Tool-Calling Pipelines
Apr 23, 2026Abel YagubyanAI Agent Reliability LLM Agent Evaluation
Independent Researcher
AgenticQwen: Training Small Agentic Language Models with Dual Data Flywheels for Industrial-Scale Tool Use
Apr 23, 2026Yuanjie Lyu, Chengyu Wang, Haonan Zheng +4Tool-Augmented Language Model Agents Agentic RL
Alibaba Group, Hangzhou, China
R2IF: Aligning Reasoning with Decisions via Composite Rewards for Interpretable LLM Function Calling
Apr 22, 2026Aijia Cheng, Kailong Wang, Ling Shi +1RL for Language Models LLM Interpretability
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Trustworthy Computing, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China · Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Nanyang Technological University
Meta-Tool: Efficient Few-Shot Tool Adaptation for Small Language Models
Apr 22, 2026Sachin KumarSmall Language Models Few-Shot Prompting
LexisNexis, USA
ReCoQA: A Benchmark for Tool-Augmented and Multi-Step Reasoning in Real Estate Question and Answering
Apr 20, 2026Yindong Zhang, Wenmian Yang, Yiquan Zhang +1LLM Agent Orchestration AI Agent Benchmarks
Hong Kong Baptist University · Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University · Beijing Normal University
JTPRO: A Joint Tool-Prompt Reflective Optimization Framework for Language Agents
Apr 20, 2026Sandip Ghoshal, Anshul Mittal, Jyotika Singh +9AI Agent Reliability LLM Tool Use
Oracle AI
ProtoCycle: Reflective Tool-Augmented Planning for Text-Guided Protein Design
Apr 18, 2026Yutang Ge, Guojiang Zhao, Sihang Li +7LLM Self-Refinement LLM Tool Use
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Mathematical Sciences · DP Technology · University of Science and Technology of China +1
Agentic Large Language Models for Training-Free Neuro-Radiological Image Analysis
Apr 17, 2026Ayhan Can Erdur, Daniel Scholz, Jiazhen Pan +3Medical Image Analysis Longitudinal Medical Image Analysis
Department of Radiation Oncology, TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany · Chair for AI in Healthcare and Medicine, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany · Chair for AI for Image-Guided Diagnosis and Therapy, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM University Hospital, Munich, Germany +3
Audio2Tool: Speak, Call, Act -- A Dataset for Benchmarking Speech Tool Use
Apr 17, 2026Ramit Pahwa, Apoorva Beedu, Parivesh Priye +4Audio-Language Model Evaluation Voice Agent Evaluation
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
ToolOmni: Enabling Open-World Tool Use via Agentic learning with Proactive Retrieval and Grounded Execution
Apr 15, 2026Shouzheng Huang, Meishan Zhang, Baotian Hu +1LLM Tool Use LLM Agent Training
Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen)
ToolSpec: Accelerating Tool Calling via Schema-Aware and Retrieval-Augmented Speculative Decoding
Apr 15, 2026Heming Xia, Yongqi Li, Cunxiao Du +2LLM Inference Acceleration LLM Tool Use
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Peking University
GCA Framework: A GCC Countries-Grounded Dataset and Agentic Pipeline for Climate Decision Support
Apr 14, 2026Muhammad Umer Sheikh, Khawar Shehzad, Salman Khan +2LLM Grounding LLM Tool Use
Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), UAE · University of Missouri, USA · Australian National University, Australia +1
UniToolCall: Unifying Tool-Use Representation, Data, and Evaluation for LLM Agents
Apr 13, 2026Yijuan Liang, Xinghao Chen, Yifan Ge +5LLM Agent Evaluation AI Agent Benchmarks
University of Science and Technology of China · Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Industrial Intelligence and Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo · Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Do LLMs Know Tool Irrelevance? Demystifying Structural Alignment Bias in Tool Invocations
Apr 13, 2026Yilong Liu, Xixun Lin, Pengfei Cao +3LLM Tool Use Tool-Use Evaluation
Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China +1
HTAA: Enhancing LLM Planning via Hybrid Toolset Agentization & Adaptation
Apr 13, 2026Chengrui Huang, Junshuo Zhang, Zhiyuan Ma +7Tool-Use Planning LLM Tool Use
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · 2DiDi Global Inc.
Resilient Write: A Six-Layer Durable Write Surface for LLM Coding Agents
Apr 12, 2026Justice Owusu Agyemang, Jerry John Kponyo, Elliot Amponsah +2LLM Agent Reliability AI Coding Agents
Sperixlabs, Ghana · Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana · VIA Cybersecurity Lab, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
TInR: Exploring Tool-Internalized Reasoning in Large Language Models
Apr 12, 2026Qiancheng Xu, Yongqi Li, Fan Liu +3LLM Tool Use Efficient Language Model Reasoning
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Southeast University · University of Edinburgh +1
Agent-Facing Information Design in LLM Tool Registries: A Preregistered Test of Rhetoric, Position and Structure
Apr 12, 2026Haochuan Kevin Wang, Zechen ZhangTool-Use Evaluation Tool-Augmented Language Model Agents
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
From GPT-3 to GPT-5: Mapping their capabilities, scope, limitations, and consequences
Apr 11, 2026Hina Afridi, Habib Ullah, Sultan Daud Khan +1Language Modeling Generative AI Evaluation
MediaFutures, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. · Faculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway. · Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Sohar University, Sohar, Oman. +2
FinTrace: Holistic Trajectory-Level Evaluation of LLM Tool Calling for Long-Horizon Financial Tasks
Apr 11, 2026Yupeng Cao, Haohang Li, Weijin Liu +11Agent Trajectory Analysis LLM Tool Use
Stevens Institute of Technology · Independent Researcher · The FinAI +2

May 7, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

BioTool: A Comprehensive Tool-Calling Dataset for Enhancing Biomedical Capabilities of Large Language Models

Xin Gao, Ruiyi Zhang, Meixi Du, Peijia Qin+1

UC San Diego · MBZUAI

LLM Fine-Tuning LLM Tool Use

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Despite the success of large language models (LLMs) on general-purpose tasks, their performance in highly specialized domains such as biomedicine remains unsatisfactory. A key limitation is the inability of LLMs to effectively leverage biomedical tools, which clinical experts and biomedical researchers rely on extensively in daily workflows. While recent general-domain tool-calling datasets have substantially improved the capabilities of LLM agents, existing efforts in the biomedical domain largely rely on in-context learning and restrict models to a small set of tools. To address this gap, we introduce BioTool, a comprehensive biomedical tool-calling dataset designed for fine-tuning LLMs. BioTool comprises 34 frequently used tools collected from the NCBI, Ensembl, and UniProt databases, along with 7,040 high-quality, human-verified query-API call pairs spanning variation, genomics, proteomics, evolution, and general biology. Fine-tuning a 4-billion-parameter LLM on BioTool yields substantial improvements in biomedical tool-calling performance, outperforming cutting-edge commercial LLMs such as GPT-5.1. Furthermore, human expert evaluations demonstrate that integrating a BioTool-fine-tuned tool caller significantly improves downstream answer quality compared to the same LLM without tool usage, highlighting the effectiveness of BioTool in enhancing the biomedical capabilities of LLMs. The full dataset and evaluation code are available at https://github.com/gxx27/BioTool