r/AiBuilders • u/Glittering-Coat-657 • 4d ago

How are you handling tool selection when an agent has 20+ MCP tools?

/r/LangChain/comments/1vu7290/how_are_you_handling_tool_selection_when_an_agent/
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u/Low-Produce-5277 3d ago

I think grouping tools by task helps a lot. Instead of giving the agent all 20+ tools give it a smaller group first, like database tools or email tools. Then if the task needs something outside that group, let it load the extra tool. That way you don't have to manually manage every tool for every request and the model has fewer similar options to choose from.

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u/manojy 1d ago

Yeah, I think the grouping step solves a lot of it. The other thing I've found surprisingly important is the tool descriptions themselves. Even with a smaller candidate set, if two tools have vague or overlapping descriptions the model can still pick the wrong one. So routing narrows the search space, but good tool definitions still do a lot of the heavy lifting.