How to force tool calling behavior

In order to force our LLM to spelect a specific tool, we can use the tool_choice parameter to ensure certain behavior. First, let's define our model and tools:

from langchain_core.tools import tool


@tool
def add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
    """Adds a and b."""
    return a + b


@tool
def multiply(a: int, b: int) -> int:
    """Multiplies a and b."""
    return a * b


tools = [add, multiply]

API Reference:tool

For example, we can force our tool to call the multiply tool by using the following code:

llm_forced_to_multiply = llm.bind_tools(tools, tool_choice="Multiply")
llm_forced_to_multiply.invoke("what is 2 + 4")

AIMessage(content='', additional_kwargs={'tool_calls': [{'id': 'call_9cViskmLvPnHjXk9tbVla5HA', 'function': {'arguments': '{"a":2,"b":4}', 'name': 'Multiply'}, 'type': 'function'}]}, response_metadata={'token_usage': {'completion_tokens': 9, 'prompt_tokens': 103, 'total_tokens': 112}, 'model_name': 'gpt-3.5-turbo-0125', 'system_fingerprint': None, 'finish_reason': 'stop', 'logprobs': None}, id='run-095b827e-2bdd-43bb-8897-c843f4504883-0', tool_calls=[{'name': 'Multiply', 'args': {'a': 2, 'b': 4}, 'id': 'call_9cViskmLvPnHjXk9tbVla5HA'}], usage_metadata={'input_tokens': 103, 'output_tokens': 9, 'total_tokens': 112})

Even if we pass it something that doesn't require multiplcation - it will still call the tool!

We can also just force our tool to select at least one of our tools by passing in the "any" (or "required" which is OpenAI specific) keyword to the tool_choice parameter.

llm_forced_to_use_tool = llm.bind_tools(tools, tool_choice="any")
llm_forced_to_use_tool.invoke("What day is today?")

AIMessage(content='', additional_kwargs={'tool_calls': [{'id': 'call_mCSiJntCwHJUBfaHZVUB2D8W', 'function': {'arguments': '{"a":1,"b":2}', 'name': 'Add'}, 'type': 'function'}]}, response_metadata={'token_usage': {'completion_tokens': 15, 'prompt_tokens': 94, 'total_tokens': 109}, 'model_name': 'gpt-3.5-turbo-0125', 'system_fingerprint': None, 'finish_reason': 'stop', 'logprobs': None}, id='run-28f75260-9900-4bed-8cd3-f1579abb65e5-0', tool_calls=[{'name': 'Add', 'args': {'a': 1, 'b': 2}, 'id': 'call_mCSiJntCwHJUBfaHZVUB2D8W'}], usage_metadata={'input_tokens': 94, 'output_tokens': 15, 'total_tokens': 109})