Building a Custom Tool
Wire an agent up to your own API.
Wire an agent up to your own API.
Steps
Create Tool
Building a tool sounds technical, and parts of it are — but the wizard walks you through it in six short steps.
Start with the basics
Open Create Tool. The first step is a name and a description — and the description matters more than you'd think.
The description is instructions
The agent reads that description to decide when to use the tool. Write it as an instruction — 'use this to check whether a slot is free' — not as a label.
How it runs
Next, pick how it runs. Most tools call an API you already have; there are shortcuts for the common ones.
What the agent fills in
Inputs are the values the agent collects during the conversation and passes to your system — a date, an order number, a name.
The request itself
Runtime is the request body and how it should behave if your system is slow or returns an error.
What comes back
Response pulls values out of your system's reply so the agent can say them out loud — the appointment it just booked, the price it just looked up.
Check and save
Review shows the whole thing in one place. Save it, then attach it to an agent and it's live on the next call.
That's a tool
Build it once and every agent can use it. Most teams end up with a handful that cover almost everything.