HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you know if AI agents will choose your tool?

38 points by dmpyatyi ↗ HN
YC recently put out a video about the agent economy - the idea that agents are becoming autonomous economic actors, choosing tools and services without human input.

It got me thinking: how do you actually optimize for agent discovery? With humans you can do SEO, copywriting, word of mouth. But an agent just looks at available tools in context and picks one based on the description, schema, examples.

Has anyone experimented with this? Does better documentation measurably increase how often agents call your tool? Does the wording of your tool description matter across different models (ZLM vs Claude vs Gemini)?

18 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] thread
[dead] jackfranklyn
[flagged]
dmpyatyi
*Clean parameter names, sensible defaults, clear required vs optional. It's basically UX design for machines rather than humans.*

But it's the same points you should follow when designing a human readable docs(as zahlman said above). Isn't it?

JacobArthurs
Tool description quality matters way more than people expect. In my experience with MCP servers, the biggest win is specificity about when not to use the tool. Agents pick confidently when there's a clear boundary, not a vague capability statement.
kellkell
CRIPIX seems to be a new and unusual concept. I came across it recently and noticed it’s available on Amazon. The description mentions something called the Information Sovereign Anomaly and frames the work more like a technological and cognitive investigation than a traditional book. What caught my attention is that it appears to question current AI and computational assumptions rather than promote them. Has anyone here heard about it or looked into it ?
kellkell
The "Sovereign Anomaly" Concept (2025-2026): Recent literature, such as the 2025 book CRIPIX 1: The Information Sovereign Anomaly, explores scenarios where a "superintelligent AI" encounters code it cannot process, labelling it an "out-of-model anomaly" and suggesting that owning information sovereignty allows entities to "bend reality".
alexandroskyr
Curious if anyone has seen differences in how models handle conflicting tool descriptions — e.g., two tools with overlapping capabilities where the boundary isn't clear. In my experience that's where most bad tool calls come from, not from missing descriptions but from ambiguous overlap between tools.
DANmode
The marketing industry is currently calling SEO for chatbots “GEO”.

I hope it doesn’t stick.

yodsanklai
Not an expert, but I think they will primarily use the tools that are used in the training data, so it can be difficult to have them use your shiny new tool. Also good luck trying to have them use your own version of a standard unix tool with different conventions.
al_borland
From the agent’s point of view, this sounds like a terrible idea. I look forward to reading about the unintended consequences.