Letting a model call your internal systems through a tool interface
The model is handed a typed catalogue of callable functions — look up an order, check stock in a warehouse, raise a ticket — and chooses which one to invoke and with what arguments. A separate layer decides whether that invocation is permitted: reads run unattended, anything that writes waits behind an allow-list or a human confirmation.
- Effort
- Weeks of work
- Skill level
- Some technical skill
- Organisation size
- Mid-market
- Value
- Time saved, Quality
Tools named for this
- A function-calling interface where each tool is declared with a typed schema
- A protocol server that exposes an existing system's operations as callable tools
- A permission layer that decides which calls may execute unattended and which need a person
What to check before you ship it in India
- A tool that reads or writes a customer record is processing personal data whether a person or a model picked it. Section 8(1) makes the fiduciary responsible for compliance in respect of any processing undertaken by it or on its behalf by a Data Processor, irrespective of any agreement to the contrary — so handing the choice of call to a model delegates the decision and none of the duty.
- The tool catalogue is an execution surface. The protocol specification is explicit that tools represent arbitrary code execution, that a tool's own description of its behaviour should be treated as untrusted unless it comes from a trusted server, and that the protocol cannot enforce any of this at the protocol level — so a catalogue assembled from third-party servers needs the same review as a dependency.
Sources
Every claim on this page traces to one of these, on the date it was read.
- The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (No. 22 of 2023) — most obligations commence 13 May 2027 under the DPDP Rules 2025 — s.8(1) · Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology · a rule · read 2026-09-01
- API-Bank: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Tool-Augmented LLMs · Li, Zhao, Yu, Song, Li, Yu, Li, Huang, Li (Alibaba DAMO Academy); EMNLP 2023 · how it is done · read 2026-09-01
- Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs · arXiv (Patil, Zhang, Wang, Gonzalez; UC Berkeley) · how it is done · read 2026-09-01
- Model Context Protocol specification (revision 2025-06-18)