Toolformer
Toolformer is a method in which a language model teaches itself to use external tools, such as a calculator or search API, by generating candidate API calls in text and keeping those that reduce its prediction loss.
Description
It showed that tool-use behavior could be learned in a self-supervised way from only a handful of demonstrations per tool.
Sources
- Schick et al. (2023). Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools.
Cite this entry
Protologue. (2026). Toolformer. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0059). https://protologue.com/t/toolformer/
BibTeX
@misc{protologue_toolformer,
title = {Toolformer},
author = {{Protologue}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques, v1.0.0},
note = {Entry PTL-0059},
url = {https://protologue.com/t/toolformer/}
}