Tool Classification

Five categories of tools by call direction and object of impact:

perception – actively receives information;
execution – changes the external world;
collaboration – manages other agents and people;
event triggering – the agent registers, is triggered from the outside, wakes up the agent;
user communication – the agent conveys information to the user.

The first four are called by the agent; event-driven ones require an asynchronous architecture.

The quality of tool design determines the ceiling of the agent’s capabilities.