Skip to main content
Version: 2.0

Tools

Tools provide agents with capabilities to interact with data and external systems. An agent uses the conversational context and its instructions to decide which tools to call, and how use the tools' responses to respond to the user's query.

Vectara offers a number of useful tools out-of-the-box, but you can also build your own. For a complete list of available tools, refer to the Tools API docs.

Tools represent external or internal capabilities that agents can invoke dynamically. They are defined by:

  • A unique ID (tol_abcd) and name.
  • A description of their function.
  • An input schema describing accepted parameters (in JSON Schema format).
  • Metadata for categorization.
  • Runtime availability (enabled or disabled).

Searching corpora with tools​

You configure corpus search behavior for Vectara agents using the query_configuration parameter within the corpora_search tool. This parameter uses the same search and generation object formatting as shown in Advanced Single Corpus Query. Before using this tool, ensure that you have at least one indexed corpus with data. The LLM cannot modify these predefined search parameters during conversation.

For more details about the different corpus objects, see Configure Query Parameters.

Agent configuration examples​

This example demonstrates a basic configuration.

BASIC QUERY CONFIGURATION EXAMPLE

Code example with json syntax.
1

Working with artifact-based tools​

Some agent tools work with files uploaded to a session's workspace. Rather than embedding file contents in every request, these tools use artifact references.

Document conversion tool​

The document conversion tool extracts content from uploaded files and converts them to markdown format. It accepts an artifact reference as input and creates a new artifact containing the markdown output.

Supported file types include:

  • PDF documents (.pdf)
  • Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)
  • Images with OCR capability (.jpg, .png)

For example ahe tool reads a PDF artifact, converts it to markdown, stores the result as a new artifact, and returns the new artifact reference to the agent.

Structured document indexing tool​

The structured document indexing tool adds content from artifacts to corpora. It references pre-converted markdown artifacts instead of requiring inline document content, enabling efficient indexing workflows. When the agent calls this tool, it references the artifact to index.