Tools

Tools enable tambo to interact with your application's apis, agents, and other server-side functionality.

Tools enable tambo to interact with your application's data and functionality. They provide a type-safe way to extend the AI's capabilities with custom business logic. Tambo will call these tools and use their outputs to help decide how to respond to a message, what component to show, and what data to fill the component with.

interface TamboTool {
  name: string;
  description: string; // What is this tool for and when should tambo use it?
  tool: (input: z.infer<ZodTypeAny>) => any; // The function that tambo will call when using this tool
  inputSchema: ZodTypeAny; // The parameter type that tambo will use when calling the tool.
}

To make use of tools, we will:

Add tools by defining them and registering them with tambo
Associate tools with components, so tambo know which tools to focus on when using a given component

Adding a Tool

//define the function's input schema
const weatherSchema = z.object({
  city: z.string().optional(),
});
 
//define the tool function. This is your own custom function and can perform any logic you want.
const getWeather = async (city?: string) => {
  try {
    const weather = await fetch(`https://api.weatherapi.com/&city=${city}`); //mock weather api
    return weather;
  } catch (error) {
    throw new Error(`Failed to fetch weather for ${city}`);
  }
};
 
//define the tool
const tool: TamboTool = {
  name: "get_weather",
  description: "Fetch current weather information for a specified city",
  tool: getWeather,
  inputSchema: weatherSchema,
};
 
//register the tool
tamboClient.registerTool(tool);

Registering a Tool using React Hooks:

const { registerTool, registerTools } = useTambo();
 
const tool1 = // tool definition
const tool2 = // tool definition
registerTool(tool1); // register a single tool
registerTools([tool1, tool2]); // register multiple tools at once

Associating Tools with Components

Once tambo has decided on a component to use in response to a message, it will use the registered tools if it has decided that extra external data is needed to fill the component properly. To tell tambo which tools to consider for a given component, we need to associate the tools with the component. A tool can be associated with multiple components.

During component definition:

If you already have the tool functionality defined when you register your components, you can pass the tool directly to the component definition.

const weatherTool: TamboTool = {
  name: "getForecast",
  description: "Call the weather API to get today's forecast",
  // a function, called with `await fetchForecast("Las Vegas")`
  tool: fetchForecast,
  toolSchema: z
    .function()
    .args(
      z
        .string()
        .describe(
          "The geographic location, such as a city, state, or zip code",
        ),
    ),
};
 
tamboClient.registerComponent({
  name: "WeatherComponent",
  //other component definition fields...
  associatedTools: [weatherTool],
});

Using React Hooks:

If you define your tool functionality sometime after registering your components, you can use the addToolAssociation hook to associate the tool with the component.

import { useTambo } from "@tambo-ai/react";
 
const { addToolAssociation } = useTambo();
 
const weatherTool: TamboTool = {
  //tool definition
};
 
addToolAssociation("WeatherComponent", weatherTool); // will fail if there is no registered component with the name 'WeatherComponent'

Tools

Adding a Tool

Associating Tools with Components

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