# What is tool use in AI?

Tool use is a model acting through capabilities you grant it: searching, querying systems, editing files, sending messages. The model reasons about which tool fits, calls it via function calling, reads the result, and continues. It is what turns a text generator into an agent that completes work.

Good tool design matters more than model choice: small, well-named tools with tight schemas and clear failure messages produce reliable agents; sprawling do-everything tools produce guesswork.

Governance is the production half of the story. Every tool grant is a permission; sandboxes, audit logs, and human approval on write actions are what make tool-using agents deployable in regulated work.

## Related terms

- [AI agents](https://allocate.network/glossary/ai-agents.md)
- [Function calling](https://allocate.network/glossary/function-calling.md)
- [Agent sandbox](https://allocate.network/glossary/agent-sandbox.md)

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