Stopping the LLM from calling the same tool twice (and other things it shouldn't)
A recent incident highlighted a flaw in an agent's tool usage, where it repeatedly called the same tool without making progress. The agent's limited tool list led to multiple empty document creations instead of completing the intended task. This situation underscores the need for a policy layer to prevent redundant tool calls before they occur.
- ▪An agent called the create_doc tool seven times without achieving the desired outcome.
- ▪The agent's tool list was incomplete, lacking necessary functions to complete the task.
- ▪The incident revealed the importance of implementing a policy layer to manage tool calls effectively.
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| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/ashahin/stopping-the-llm-from-calling-the-same-tool-twice-and-other-things-it-shouldnt-170o |
| Publication time | Thu, 28 May 2026 23:09:45 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-28T23:29:38.979Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-28T23:29:38.979Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | TPidy4g3oQqZ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3956503) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Abdullah Shahin Posted on May 28 Stopping the LLM from calling the same tool twice (and other things it shouldn't) #ai #agents #llm #production A user gave one of our agents this query: "Get the products from our catalog, summarize them in a nice doc, share the doc with X, and send them an email asking for feedback." The agent called create_doc seven times. Seven empty Google Docs showed up in the user's Drive. No catalog summary. No sharing. No email.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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