Mid-level interview question
The model keeps calling search_orders for refund questions that another tool handles. What do you change first?
Model answer
The two tool descriptions. The model never sees your function: the API builds a system prompt from the definitions, billed as input tokens, and the model chooses from that text. Anthropic calls detailed descriptions "by far the most important factor in tool performance" and suggests at least 3 to 4 sentences: what the tool does, when to use it and when not, what each parameter means, and its limits.
Practise the rest
8 Tools & constraints questions, 492 in all, each with a model answer. Free.
More Tools & constraints interview questions
- In tool calling, who executes the tool, and what does the model need in order to use the result?
- Explain one step of constrained sampling. What does it guarantee, and what doesn't it?
- Your agent has a delete_records tool. What has to happen between the model emitting a call and the delete running?
- Should you turn on grammar-constrained decoding for every structured output? What would you watch?
- Implement a client that spreads LLM calls across several providers, respecting their rate limits and failing over when one is down.
- Design an AI chat for a spreadsheet product that turns commands like sum column K or delete row 5 into validated tool calls on the sheet.