// ⌘ Agents & Tool Use

Toolformer

A model teaches itself when and how to call APIs.

Toolformer 自学用工具 2023 Intermediate extended

IN PLAIN WORDS

The model inserts candidate API calls and keeps only those that improve prediction of following text, learning to use calculators, search and translation self-supervised.

Used in: Tool-learning research

TIMELINE · prerequisites → this → what builds on it

2020 GPT-3 & In-Co…2023 Toolformer

01Original paper

Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools

Timo Schick, Jane Dwivedi-Yu, Roberto Dessì, et al. · 2023

arXiv ↗ ✓ Verified · arXiv API

02Where it sits

Learn the left column first; the right column builds on this one.

Learn first

GPT-3 & In-Context Learning

Toolformer

Then you can learn

Nothing in the atlas builds on it yet

Left: prerequisites · right: builds on this · dashed: related. Full map →

03Learning resources

Official docs, explainers, courses and reference code. All links checked.

Explainers

Lilian Weng：LLM Powered Autonomous Agents ↗EN

04Where the course teaches it

U82 Agents: Tool Use, MCP, Planning & Memory ReAct, function calling, MCP, reflection, memory, multi-agent systems, computer use and sandboxes. 12 h10 algorithms4 paperslesson ready

For AI / data

Verification: verified, checked 2026-10-21.
JSON: /api/learn/algorithms.json (id: toolformer)