mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Linguistic and Argument Diversity in Synthetic Data for Function-Calling Agents

arXiv 2601.17829 ↗First posted 25 Jan 2026cs.CL cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Tool learning and function calling

Abstract (arXiv)

The construction of function calling agents has emerged as a promising avenue for extending model capabilities. A major challenge for this task is obtaining high quality diverse data for training. Prior work emphasizes diversity in functions, invocation patterns, and interaction turns, yet linguistic diversity of requests and coverage of arguments (e.g., textttcityname, textttstockticker) remain underexplored. We propose a method that generates synthetic datasets via optimizing general-purpose diversity metrics across both queries and arguments, without relying on hand-crafted rules or taxonomies, making it robust to different usecases. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique via both intrinsic and extrinsic testing, comparing it to SoTA data generation methods. We show a superiority over baselines in terms of diversity, while keeping comparable correctness. Additionally, when used as a training set, the model resulting from our dataset exhibits superior performance compared to analogous models based on the baseline data generation methods in out-of-distribution performance. In particular, we achieve an 7.4% increase in accuracy on the BFCL benchmark compared to similar counterparts.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Tool learning and function calling, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 26 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Jan 2026.

Builds on

26 of 69 references.

Closest ancestors · 11

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025ToolGrad: Efficient Tool-use Dataset Generation with Textual "Gradients"6 Aug
  2. 2025Magnet: Multi-turn Tool-use Data Synthesis and Distillation via Graph Translation10 Mar
  3. 2024ToolFlow: Boosting LLM Tool-Calling Through Natural and Coherent Dialogue Synthesis24 Oct
  4. 2024From Exploration to Mastery: Enabling LLMs to Master Tools via Self-Driven Interactions10 Oct
  5. 2024Quality Matters: Evaluating Synthetic Data for Tool-Using LLMs24 Sep
  6. 2024APIGen: Automated Pipeline for Generating Verifiable and Diverse Function-Calling Datasets26 Jun
  7. 2023MINT: Evaluating LLMs in Multi-turn Interaction with Tools and Language Feedback19 Sep
  8. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs31 Jul
  9. 2023ToolAlpaca: Generalized Tool Learning for Language Models with 3000 Simulated Cases8 Jun
  10. 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs24 May
  11. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools9 Feb

Other references · 15

  1. 2020The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modelingcited by 2,346
  2. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
  3. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,280
  4. 2015A Diversity-Promoting Objective Function for Neural Conversation Modelscited by 1,068
  5. 2025τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environmentcited by 558
  6. 2024Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personascited by 397
  7. 2022The Vendi Score: A Diversity Evaluation Metric for Machine Learningcited by 299
  8. 2024Large Language Models for Data Annotation and Synthesis: A Surveycited by 201
  9. 2020Evaluating the Evaluation of Diversity in Natural Language Generationcited by 127
  10. 2024Best Practices and Lessons Learned on Synthetic Datacited by 104
  11. 2025Prismatic Synthesis: Gradient-based Data Diversification Boosts Generalization in LLM Reasoningcited by 38
  12. 2024MTU-Bench: A Multi-granularity Tool-Use Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 17
3 more
  1. 2023Why Can't Discourse Parsing Generalize? A Thorough Investigation of the Impact of Data Diversitycited by 15
  2. 2024Measuring and Modifying the Readability of English Texts with GPT-4cited by 10
  3. 2024Measuring Grammatical Diversity from Small Corpora: Derivational Entropy Rates, Mean Length of Utterances, and Annotation Invariancecited by 3

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  1. 2026GenesisFunc: Multi-Agent Data Generation for Accurate and Generalizable Function-Calling
  2. 2025MetaSynth: Meta-Prompting-Driven Agentic Scaffolds for Diverse Synthetic Data Generation
  3. 2024On the Diversity of Synthetic Data and its Impact on Training Large Language Models
  4. 2024Surveying the Effects of Quality, Diversity, and Complexity in Synthetic Data From Large Language Models
  5. 2025Multi-Sample Prompting and Actor-Critic Prompt Optimization for Diverse Synthetic Data Generation
  6. 2025RouteNator: A Router-Based Multi-Modal Architecture for Generating Synthetic Training Data for Function Calling LLMs
  7. 2026Synthetic Data Generation for Training Diversified Commonsense Reasoning Models
  8. 2026Demystifying Multi-Agent Debate: The Role of Confidence and Diversity