Tool Use, Agentic Patterns, and Orchestration
Tools as contracts
Tool use questions center on well-designed interfaces: clear names, narrow scope, typed parameters with descriptions, and documented error semantics. The model decides when to call; your system enforces whether it may. Understand the loop: model proposes a tool call → orchestrator validates arguments → executes with timeout and idempotency → returns structured result → model continues. Validation and authorization live outside the model.
Agentic patterns
Know the vocabulary: single-agent ReAct loops, planner-executor splits, router/dispatcher patterns, reflection and self-critique, and multi-agent collaboration with a supervisor. Multi-agent adds coordination cost and failure modes; reserve it for genuinely decomposable work with clear interfaces. Understand termination conditions, max-iteration caps, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints for consequential actions.
Orchestration concerns
- Determinism where possible: prefer explicit workflows over open-ended loops for repeatable business processes.
- State and memory: persist plan state so long tasks survive restarts.
- Error handling: distinguish retryable (transient) from non-retryable (bad arguments) failures; feed errors back to the model as observations.
- Guardrails: allow-lists for tools, confirmation gates for destructive actions, and audit logs.
Traps
Questions bait you toward unbounded autonomy or toward multi-agent designs for simple tasks. Watch for missing termination conditions, tools that return raw exceptions, and orchestrators that trust model-supplied arguments without validation. Another trap: confusing a tool call with a side effect - reads are safe to retry, writes need idempotency.
Rule of thumb
Give the model judgment, give the orchestrator control: validate every argument, cap every loop, and gate every irreversible action.