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How to pass tool outputs to chat models

Prerequisites

This guide assumes familiarity with the following concepts:

Some models are capable of tool calling - generating arguments that conform to a specific user-provided schema. This guide will demonstrate how to use those tool calls to actually call a function and properly pass the results back to the model.

Diagram of a tool call invocation

Diagram of a tool call result

First, let's define our tools and our model:

pip install -qU "langchain[openai]"
import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY"):
  os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for OpenAI: ")

from langchain.chat_models import init_chat_model

llm = init_chat_model("gpt-4o-mini", model_provider="openai")
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]

llm_with_tools = llm.bind_tools(tools)
API Reference:tool

Now, let's get the model to call a tool. We'll add it to a list of messages that we'll treat as conversation history:

from langchain_core.messages import HumanMessage

query = "What is 3 * 12? Also, what is 11 + 49?"

messages = [HumanMessage(query)]

ai_msg = llm_with_tools.invoke(messages)

print(ai_msg.tool_calls)

messages.append(ai_msg)
API Reference:HumanMessage
[{'name': 'multiply', 'args': {'a': 3, 'b': 12}, 'id': 'call_GPGPE943GORirhIAYnWv00rK', 'type': 'tool_call'}, {'name': 'add', 'args': {'a': 11, 'b': 49}, 'id': 'call_dm8o64ZrY3WFZHAvCh1bEJ6i', 'type': 'tool_call'}]

Next let's invoke the tool functions using the args the model populated!

Conveniently, if we invoke a LangChain Tool with a ToolCall, we'll automatically get back a ToolMessage that can be fed back to the model:

Compatibility

This functionality was added in langchain-core == 0.2.19. Please make sure your package is up to date.

If you are on earlier versions of langchain-core, you will need to extract the args field from the tool and construct a ToolMessage manually.

for tool_call in ai_msg.tool_calls:
    selected_tool = {"add": add, "multiply": multiply}[tool_call["name"].lower()]
    tool_msg = selected_tool.invoke(tool_call)
    messages.append(tool_msg)

messages
[HumanMessage(content='What is 3 * 12? Also, what is 11 + 49?'),
 AIMessage(content='', additional_kwargs={'tool_calls': [{'id': 'call_loT2pliJwJe3p7nkgXYF48A1', 'function': {'arguments': '{"a": 3, "b": 12}', 'name': 'multiply'}, 'type': 'function'}, {'id': 'call_bG9tYZCXOeYDZf3W46TceoV4', 'function': {'arguments': '{"a": 11, "b": 49}', 'name': 'add'}, 'type': 'function'}]}, response_metadata={'token_usage': {'completion_tokens': 50, 'prompt_tokens': 87, 'total_tokens': 137}, 'model_name': 'gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18', 'system_fingerprint': 'fp_661538dc1f', 'finish_reason': 'tool_calls', 'logprobs': None}, id='run-e3db3c46-bf9e-478e-abc1-dc9a264f4afe-0', tool_calls=[{'name': 'multiply', 'args': {'a': 3, 'b': 12}, 'id': 'call_loT2pliJwJe3p7nkgXYF48A1', 'type': 'tool_call'}, {'name': 'add', 'args': {'a': 11, 'b': 49}, 'id': 'call_bG9tYZCXOeYDZf3W46TceoV4', 'type': 'tool_call'}], usage_metadata={'input_tokens': 87, 'output_tokens': 50, 'total_tokens': 137}),
 ToolMessage(content='36', name='multiply', tool_call_id='call_loT2pliJwJe3p7nkgXYF48A1'),
 ToolMessage(content='60', name='add', tool_call_id='call_bG9tYZCXOeYDZf3W46TceoV4')]

And finally, we'll invoke the model with the tool results. The model will use this information to generate a final answer to our original query:

llm_with_tools.invoke(messages)
AIMessage(content='The result of \\(3 \\times 12\\) is 36, and the result of \\(11 + 49\\) is 60.', response_metadata={'token_usage': {'completion_tokens': 31, 'prompt_tokens': 153, 'total_tokens': 184}, 'model_name': 'gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18', 'system_fingerprint': 'fp_661538dc1f', 'finish_reason': 'stop', 'logprobs': None}, id='run-87d1ef0a-1223-4bb3-9310-7b591789323d-0', usage_metadata={'input_tokens': 153, 'output_tokens': 31, 'total_tokens': 184})

Note that each ToolMessage must include a tool_call_id that matches an id in the original tool calls that the model generates. This helps the model match tool responses with tool calls.

Tool calling agents, like those in LangGraph, use this basic flow to answer queries and solve tasks.

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