COMMON TOOL CATEGORIES

CHAPTER SUMMARY Agent tools fall into six common families: web search and browsing, code execution and shell, file system and document, database and API, communication, and specialized domain tools. Each family has typical uses and typical dangers, such as prompt injection from web pages, damage from code execution, path tricks in file tools, destructive queries in database tools, irreversible messages in communication tools, and domain-level consequences in specialized tools. Match each danger with a mitigation such as sandboxing, allowlists, read-only access, approvals, and rate limits, and give an agent only the minimum tool set it needs. KEY TERMS REVIEW URL: the address of a web page. Prompt injection: hidden instructions in content that try to steer the agent. Shell: a text interface for typing commands. Database: an organized collection of searchable information. API: a menu of requests software offers to other software. Draft versus send: separating creation of a message from dispatching it. Minimum viable tool set: the smallest set of tools that does the job.