Tool Design
Should be used for the tool-interface layer of an agent system specifically: writing...
Install
npx skills add muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering --skill tool-design -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering18.3k
- Category
- Design
- Updated
- 24d ago
- License
- MIT
- Context cost
- Mediumabout 3,000 tokens
- Runs scripts
- Yes, review before use
What it does
This skill should be used for the tool-interface layer of an agent system specifically: writing tool descriptions agents can route on, designing tool schemas and response formats, naming conventions, actionable error recovery messages, MCP server design, tool-set consolidation, and deciding when to add or remove an individual tool. Use this when the unit of work is a single tool or a set of tools. Route project-shape, pipeline architecture, and task-model-fit decisions to project-development; route deciding whether to introduce sub-agents to multi-agent-patterns.
Tool Design for Agents
Design every tool as a contract between a deterministic system and a non-deterministic agent. Unlike human-facing APIs, agent-facing tools must make the contract unambiguous through the description alone: agents infer intent from descriptions and generate calls that must match expected formats. Every ambiguity becomes a potential failure mode that no amount of prompt engineering can fix.
The unit of work for this skill is a single tool or a tool catalog. Project-shape, pipeline architecture, task-model-fit, and cost-at-the-project-level decisions belong to project-development. Deciding whether to introduce sub-agents belongs to multi-agent-patterns. This skill owns the interface layer that connects deterministic code to the agent.
When to Activate
Activate this skill when the unit of work is a tool:
- Writing a new tool description, schema, or response format.
- Debugging cases where the agent picked the wrong tool or generated malformed calls.
- Consolidating an overlapping tool catalog (the classic "we have 17 tools, the agent picks wrong half the time" case).
- Designing actionable error messages so the agent can self-correct.
- Naming tools and parameters consistently across a catalog (MCP namespacing, verb-noun naming).
- Evaluating a third-party tool against the consolidation principle before adding it.
Do not activate this skill for adjacent work owned by other skills:
- Deciding whether the project should use LLMs at all, or what the pipeline stages should be:
project-development. - Deciding whether to split work across sub-agents or run a single agent with more tools:
multi-agent-patterns. - Reducing the token weight of tool outputs at the trajectory level (observation masking, format-option choice at scale):
context-optimization.
