#LangChain

A bright protocol-specification archive room: pale ash shelving of cloth-bound spec volumes recedes along one wall, and on the facing wall a nickel-and-brass specimen case holds a chronological row of connector standards with the newest one held just above its empty mount

How AI Models Learned to Use Tools: A Protocol History

Four calling conventions, each dated to a real announcement: a manifest borrowed from web APIs, a schema built into the model call itself, incompatible framework wrappers, and a standard now governed by the vendors who once competed on incompatibility.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 12, 2026 · 15 min read

A long instrument bench in a bright protocol-interoperability lab with several distinct demonstration stations laid out in a row, the nearest station's cable caught half into a hub of uniform ports while the other stations continue down the bench

AI Infrastructure

Function Calling, MCP, and the Other Ways to Give a Model Tools

A model that only emits text cannot query a database or send an email. Four documented patterns cross that boundary, and each one answers a different question — none is a smaller version of another.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 12, 2026 · 18 min read

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