Why are tool descriptions important for Claude Code?

Tool descriptions function as prompt engineering. They are loaded into the agent's context to help it understand what a tool does, when to trigger it, and what data to expect in return.

How does architectural reduction help AI agents?

Architectural reduction replaces specialized, brittle tools with general-purpose primitives (like direct file access), allowing the agent's reasoning capabilities to solve problems instead of being constrained by predefined tool logic.

What is the consolidation principle in agent tool design?

The consolidation principle states that if a human engineer cannot definitively choose between two tools, an agent cannot either. It advocates for single comprehensive tools over multiple narrow tools to reduce ambiguity.

What is the correct naming convention for MCP tools?

For Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, always use fully qualified names in the format 'ServerName:tool_name' to prevent 'tool not found' errors when multiple servers are active.

Agent Tool Design

Name: Agent Tool Design
Author: Kalyanikhandare29

byKalyanikhandare29

API Development

Optimizes AI agent performance through expert tool architecture, consolidation strategies, and high-precision Model Context Protocol (MCP) design.

About

This skill provides a comprehensive framework for designing effective interfaces between non-deterministic AI agents and deterministic software systems. It moves beyond traditional API design by emphasizing the 'Consolidation Principle' to reduce agent ambiguity, architectural reduction to favor powerful primitives over complex specialized tools, and precise description engineering to steer agent behavior. Whether you are implementing MCP servers or building custom agentic workflows, this skill helps minimize tool-related failures and optimizes context usage by ensuring your tools are designed specifically for LLM reasoning patterns.

Key Features

Architectural reduction patterns to favor general-purpose primitives
Actionable error message design to facilitate agent self-correction
Standardized MCP tool naming and namespacing conventions
Engineering-grade tool description templates for better agent steering
0 GitHub stars
Consolidation strategies to reduce tool set ambiguity and token overhead

Use Cases

Debugging and fixing common agent failures related to tool misuse
Designing a new suite of MCP tools for enterprise system integration
Refactoring a complex multi-tool architecture to improve agent reliability

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add kalyanikhandare29/agent-skills-for-context-engineering tool-design

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill

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