UniToolCall: Unifying Tool-Use Representation, Data, and Evaluation for LLM Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Tool learning and function calling
Abstract (arXiv)
Tool-use capability is a fundamental component of LLM agents, enabling them to interact with external systems through structured function calls. However, existing research exhibits inconsistent interaction representations, largely overlooks the structural distribution of tool-use trajectories, and relies on incompatible evaluation benchmarks. We present UniToolCall, a unified framework for tool learning that standardizes the entire pipeline from toolset construction and dataset generation to evaluation. The framework curates a large tool pool of 22k+ tools and constructs a hybrid training corpus of 390k+ instances by combining 10 standardized public datasets with structurally controlled synthetic trajectories. It explicitly models diverse interaction patterns, including single-hop vs. multi-hop and single-turn vs. multi-turn, while capturing both serial and parallel execution structures. To support coherent multi-turn reasoning, we further introduce an Anchor Linkage mechanism that enforces cross-turn dependencies. Furthermore, we convert 7 public benchmarks into a unified Query--Action--Observation--Answer (QAOA) representation with fine-grained evaluation at the function-call, turn, and conversation levels. Experiments show that fine-tuning Qwen3-8B on our dataset substantially improves tool-use performance. Under the distractor-heavy Hybrid-20 setting, achieves 93.0% single-turn Strict Precision, outperforming commercial models including GPT, Gemini, and Claude.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Tool learning and function calling, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 29 of its 49 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2026.
Builds on
29 of 49 references.
Closest ancestors · 22
Same direction, newest first
- 2025ToolForge: A Data Synthesis Pipeline for Multi-Hop Search without Real-World APIs18 Dec
- 2025TheMCPCompany: Creating General-purpose Agents with Task-specific Tools22 Oct
- 2025TRAJECT-Bench:A Trajectory-Aware Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Tool Use6 Oct
- 2025TOUCAN: Synthesizing 1.5M Tool-Agentic Data from Real-World MCP Environments1 Oct
- 2025ToolRM: Outcome Reward Models for Tool-Calling Large Language Models15 Sep
- 2025MCP-Bench: Benchmarking Tool-Using LLM Agents with Complex Real-World Tasks via MCP Servers28 Aug
- 2025MCP-Universe: Benchmarking Large Language Models with Real-World Model Context Protocol Servers20 Aug
- 2025MCP-RADAR: A Multi-Dimensional Benchmark for Evaluating Tool Use Capabilities in Large Language Models22 May
- 2025Magnet: Multi-turn Tool-use Data Synthesis and Distillation via Graph Translation10 Mar
- 2025ToolDial: Multi-turn Dialogue Generation Method for Tool-Augmented Language Models1 Mar
- 2025ComplexFuncBench: Exploring Multi-Step and Constrained Function Calling under Long-Context Scenario17 Jan
- 2025ToolHop: A Query-Driven Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Multi-Hop Tool Use5 Jan
10 more
- 2024ToolFlow: Boosting LLM Tool-Calling Through Natural and Coherent Dialogue Synthesis24 Oct
- 2024Facilitating Multi-turn Function Calling for LLMs via Compositional Instruction Tuning16 Oct
- 2024Efficient and Scalable Estimation of Tool Representations in Vector Space2 Sep
- 2024ToolACE: Winning the Points of LLM Function Calling2 Sep
- 2024APIGen: Automated Pipeline for Generating Verifiable and Diverse Function-Calling Datasets26 Jun
- 2024Seal-Tools: Self-Instruct Tool Learning Dataset for Agent Tuning and Detailed Benchmark14 May
- 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs31 Jul
- 2023ToolAlpaca: Generalized Tool Learning for Language Models with 3000 Simulated Cases8 Jun
- 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs24 May
- 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools9 Feb
Other references · 7
- 2024AgentBoard: An Analytical Evaluation Board of Multi-turn LLM Agentscited by 319
- 2024Agent AI: Surveying the Horizons of Multimodal Interactioncited by 167
- 2025APIGen-MT: Agentic Pipeline for Multi-Turn Data Generation via Simulated Agent-Human Interplaycited by 158
- 2025ToolMind Technical Report: A Large-Scale, Reasoning-Enhanced Tool-Use Datasetcited by 27
- 2025LoopTool: Closing the Data-Training Loop for Robust LLM Tool Callscited by 16
- 2025Tools are under-documented: Simple Document Expansion Boosts Tool Retrievalcited by 12
- 2026ASTRA: Automated Synthesis of agentic Trajectories and Reinforcement Arenascited by 6
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026OpaqueToolsBench: Learning Nuances of Tool Behavior Through Interaction
- 2026Are Tools All We Need? Unveiling the Tool-Use Tax in LLM Agents
- 2026ToolWeave: Structured Synthesis of Complex Multi-Turn Tool-Calling Dialogues
- 2026The Evolution of Tool Use in LLM Agents: From Single-Tool Call to Multi-Tool Orchestration
- 2025MemTool: Optimizing Short-Term Memory Management for Dynamic Tool Calling in LLM Agent Multi-Turn Conversations
- 2026Action-Space Shaping for LLM Agents: Measuring and Mitigating Tool-Schema Bias
- 2026AgentEscapeBench: Evaluating Out-of-Domain Tool-Grounded Reasoning in LLM Agents
- 2026ToolMenuBench: Benchmarking Tool-Menu Filtering Strategies for Reliable and Efficient LLM Agents