Claude Advanced Tool Use
13 comments
·November 24, 2025arianvanp
Okay so this is just the `apropos` and `whatis` command¥ to search through available man pages. Then `man` command to discover how the tools work. Followed by tool execution?
Really. We should be treating Claude code more like a shell session. No need for MCPs
cube2222
Nice! Feature #2 here is basically an implementation of the “write code to call tools instead of calling them directly” that was a big topic of conversation recently.
It uses their Python sandbox, is available via API, and exposes the tool calls themselves as normal tool calls to the API client - should be really simple to use!
Batch tool calling has been a game-changer for the AI assistant we've built into our product recently, and this sounds like a further evolution of this, really (primarily, it's about speed; if you can accomplish 2x more tools calls in one turn, it will usually mean your agent is now 2x faster).
tfirst
We seem to be on a cycle of complexity -> simplicity -> complexity with AI agent design. First we had agents like Manus or Devin that had massive scaffolding around them, then we had simple LLMs in loops, then MCP added capabilities at the cost of context consumption, then in the last month everything has been bash + filesystem, and now we're back to creating more complex tools.
I wonder if there will be another round of simplifications as models continue to improve, or if the scaffolding is here to stay.
mettamage
Hmm the Gemini API doesn’t need MCP for tool-use if I understand correctly. It just needs registered functions
Aperocky
Most of the time people sit on complex because they don't have a strong enough incentive to move from something that appears/happen to work, with AI, cost would be a huge incentive.
behnamoh
This is what I've been talking about for a few months now. the AI field seems to reinvent the wheel every few months. And because most people really don't know what they're talking about, they just jump on the hype and adopt the new so-called standards without really thinking if it's the right approach. It really annoys me because I have been following some open source projects that have had some genuinely novel ideas about AI agent design. And they are mostly ignored by the community. But as soon as a large company like Anthropic or OpenAI starts a trend, suddenly everyone adopts it.
fishmicrowaver
Well, what are those projects? I don't speak for anyone else, but I'm generally fatigued by the endless parade of science fair projects at this point, and operate under the assumption that if an approach is good enough, openai/anthropic/google will fold useful ideas under their tools/products.
behnamoh
I cannot believe all these months and years people have been loading all of the tool JSON schemas upfront. This is such a waste of context window and something that was already solved three years ago.
vessenes
I'm confused about these tools - is this a decorator that you can add to your MCP server tools so that they don't pollute the context? How else would I add a "tool" for claude to use?
cube2222
When you make API calls to generate chat completions, you specify a list of tools. They can be MCP tools, or just arbitrary tool metadata.
The API will then respond when it needs the client code to compute a tool output.
pupppet
What’s the best way to prevent the input context from compounding with each tool call?
postalrat
Tools for tools. How about an LLM tool for tools?
> Tool Search Tool, which allows Claude to use search tools to access thousands of tools without consuming its context window
At some point, you run into the problem of having many tools that can accomplish the same task. Then you need a tool search engine, which helps you find the most relevant tool for your search keywords. But tool makers start to abuse Tool Engine Optimization (TEO) techniques to push their tools to the top of the tool rankings