SING: Synthetic Intention Graph for Scalable Active Tool Discovery in LLM Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Tool learning and function calling
Abstract (arXiv)
Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on agent harnesses that manage context, tools, and multi-turn execution, making tools a central interface for acting in realistic digital environments. As harness-connected tool ecosystems expand to hundreds or thousands of APIs, services, and task-specific skills, exhaustive tool schema injection becomes costly and imposes a closed-world assumption that limits agents to a predefined static inventory. Retrieval-augmented tool selection offers a natural alternative, but existing one-shot retrieval methods often fail to align isolated tool descriptions with the agent's true task intention, especially in long-horizon tasks where required capabilities emerge through decomposition, observations, and newly induced subgoals. We propose SING, an intention-aware active tool discovery framework that builds an intention-tool graph linking user intentions, tool capabilities, and tool collaboration patterns, and dynamically retrieves tools according to evolving task states. Using a unified corpus of 7,471 tools, we evaluate SING on three real-world tool-use benchmarks. SING improves Global Recall@5 by up to 59.8% and downstream success rate by up to 28.9% over baselines, while reducing full-corpus tool-schema exposure by 99.8%, demonstrating that intention-aware graph structure enables more accurate and context-efficient tool discovery in large-scale agentic ecosystems.
Key facts. Cited by 4 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 24 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2026.
Builds on
24 of 47 references.
Closest ancestors · 11
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Model Context Protocol (MCP) Tool Descriptions Are Smelly! Towards Improving AI Agent Efficiency with Augmented MCP Tool Descriptions16 Feb
- 2025MCPAgentBench: A Real-world Task Benchmark for Evaluating LLM Agent MCP Tool Use31 Dec
- 2025MCP-Flow: Facilitating LLM Agents to Master Real-World, Diverse and Scaling MCP Tools28 Oct
- 2025TOUCAN: Synthesizing 1.5M Tool-Agentic Data from Real-World MCP Environments1 Oct
- 2025MCP-Bench: Benchmarking Tool-Using LLM Agents with Complex Real-World Tasks via MCP Servers28 Aug
- 2025MCP-Zero: Active Tool Discovery for Autonomous LLM Agents1 Jun
- 2024Efficient and Scalable Estimation of Tool Representations in Vector Space2 Sep
- 2024AnyTool: Self-Reflective, Hierarchical Agents for Large-Scale API Calls6 Feb
- 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs31 Jul
- 2023Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs24 May
- 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools9 Feb
Other references · 13
- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2023Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contextscited by 3,383
- 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,280
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,134
- 2026DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligencecited by 877
- 2025ReTool: Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Tool Use in LLMscited by 377
- 2025ToolRL: Reward is All Tool Learning Needscited by 342
- 2025Large Language Models for Planning: A Comprehensive and Systematic Surveycited by 38
- 2025MCPToolBench++: A Large Scale AI Agent Model Context Protocol MCP Tool Use Benchmarkcited by 30
- 2026WildClawBench: A Benchmark for Real-World, Long-Horizon Agent Evaluationcited by 29
- 2024User Intent Recognition and Satisfaction with Large Language Models: A User Study with ChatGPTcited by 19
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.
4 papers.
- 2026Comparative Approaches to Agent Retrieval over Large Skill Librariescited by 0
- 2026Does More Retrieved Evidence Help Visual Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Diffusion Language Models?cited by 0
- 2026What Can Component-Replacement Evidence Establish? A Critical Scoping Review of Local Decisions in LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026Safe, Persistent, and Evolving Agent Harness for Understanding Partially Observable Worldscited by 0
- 2026Safe, Persistent, and Evolving Agent Harness for Understanding Partially Observable Worlds8 Oct 2026
- 2026What Can Component-Replacement Evidence Establish? A Critical Scoping Review of Local Decisions in LLM Agents30 Sep 2026
- 2026Does More Retrieved Evidence Help Visual Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Diffusion Language Models?7 Aug 2026
- 2026Comparative Approaches to Agent Retrieval over Large Skill Libraries6 Aug 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2025GRETEL: A Goal-driven Retrieval and Execution-based Trial Framework for LLM Tool Selection Enhancing
- 2026Tools Are Not Islands: Set-Level Tool Retrieval for LLM Agents via Query-Conditioned Hyperedge Prediction
- 2026OpaqueToolsBench: Learning Nuances of Tool Behavior Through Interaction
- 2026ToolOmni: Enabling Open-World Tool Use via Agentic learning with Proactive Retrieval and Grounded Execution
- 2026ToolAtlas: Learning Once, Reusing Everywhere with Tool-Side Memory
- 2026HyperAgent: Planning and Acting over Tool-Schema Hypergraphs for Tool-Use LLM Agents
- 2026UniToolCall: Unifying Tool-Use Representation, Data, and Evaluation for LLM Agents
- 2026Lomekwi: Resource-Bounded Tool Discovery in LLM Agents