# MetaTool: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master Tools with Meta-task Augmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12871 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12871/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Tool learning and function calling, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 33 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Tool learning and function calling](https://mlsanity.com/agents/tool-learning-and-function-calling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13854/) (2023)
- [ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16789/) (2023)
- [WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09332/) (2021)
- [Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15334/) (2023)
- [Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06070/) (2023)
- [HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17580/) (2023)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04671/) (2023)
- [Visual Programming: Compositional visual reasoning without training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11559/) (2022)
- [WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13919/) (2024)
- [AppAgent: Multimodal Agents as Smartphone Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13771/) (2023)
- [PlanBench: An Extensible Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models on Planning and Reasoning about Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10498/) (2022)
- [Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10088/) (2023)
- [Tool Learning with Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08354/) (2023)
- [ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17582/) (2023)
- [ToolQA: A Dataset for LLM Question Answering with External Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13304/) (2023)
- [ToolkenGPT: Augmenting Frozen Language Models with Massive Tools via Tool Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11554/) (2023)
- [TALM: Tool Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12255/) (2022)
- [ART: Automatic multi-step reasoning and tool-use for large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09014/) (2023)
- [DocPrompting: Generating Code by Retrieving the Docs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05987/) (2022)
- [On the Tool Manipulation Capability of Open-source Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16504/) (2023)
- [AssistGPT: A General Multi-modal Assistant that can Plan, Execute, Inspect, and Learn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08640/) (2023)
- [WebCPM: Interactive Web Search for Chinese Long-form Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06849/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18970/) (2025)
- [MCPVerse: An Expansive, Real-World Benchmark for Agentic Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16260/) (2025)
- [GTM: Simulating the World of Tools for AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04535/) (2025)
- [Provable Benefits of In-Tool Learning for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20755/) (2025)
- [Code-in-the-Loop Forensics: Agentic Tool Use for Image Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16300/) (2025)
- [Self-Evolving Agents via Likelihood-Guided Tool-Space Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34151/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Utilizing tools with Large Language Models (LLMs) is essential for grounding AI agents in real-world applications. The prevailing approach involves few-shot prompting with demonstrations or fine-tuning with expert annotations. However, mere in-context demonstrations may fail to cover sufficient knowledge for complex tools and tasks. Training on solution paths is also hindered by the high cost of expert annotations and generalizing to new tools. A core challenge of generalizable tool use lies in understanding the "meta", or fundamental natures of tools that are transferable across tasks, such as causality and constraints. In this paper, we present MetaTool, a novel tool learning methodology designed to generalize across any reusable toolset. Our approach incorporates a self-supervised augmentation technique derived from a series of meta-tasks. This involves predicting masked elements in the tool execution process. The self-supervised procedure enables scalable generation of high-quality QA data, which is handy for supervising tool understanding. By incorporating meta-task data into task-oriented training, our method significantly enhances the performance of open-source LLMs, achieving results comparable to ChatGPT in both tool-based planning and chatting scenarios. Through large-scale instruction tuning, the MetaTool model demonstrates impressive zero-shot generalizability on new tasks.