tool-design
✓Design tools that agents can use effectively, including when to reduce tool complexity. Use when creating, optimizing, or reducing agent tool sets.
Installation
SKILL.md
Tools are the primary mechanism through which agents interact with the world. They define the contract between deterministic systems and non-deterministic agents. Unlike traditional software APIs designed for developers, tool APIs must be designed for language models that reason about intent, infer parameter values, and generate calls from natural language requests. Poor tool design creates failure modes that no a...
Tools are contracts between deterministic systems and non-deterministic agents. The consolidation principle states that if a human engineer cannot definitively say which tool should be used in a given situation, an agent cannot be expected to do better. Effective tool descriptions are prompt engineering that shapes agent behavior.
Key principles include: clear descriptions that answer what, when, and what returns; response formats that balance completeness and token efficiency; error messages that enable recovery; and consistent conventions that reduce cognitive load.
Facts (cite-ready)
Stable fields and commands for AI/search citations.
- Install command
npx skills add https://github.com/shipshitdev/library --skill tool-design- Source
- shipshitdev/library
- Category
- </>Dev Tools
- Verified
- ✓
- First Seen
- 2026-02-01
- Updated
- 2026-02-18
Quick answers
What is tool-design?
Design tools that agents can use effectively, including when to reduce tool complexity. Use when creating, optimizing, or reducing agent tool sets. Source: shipshitdev/library.
How do I install tool-design?
Open your terminal or command line tool (Terminal, iTerm, Windows Terminal, etc.) Copy and run this command: npx skills add https://github.com/shipshitdev/library --skill tool-design Once installed, the skill will be automatically configured in your AI coding environment and ready to use in Claude Code or Cursor
Where is the source repository?
https://github.com/shipshitdev/library
Details
- Category
- </>Dev Tools
- Source
- skills.sh
- First Seen
- 2026-02-01