#systems design

Tagged systems design · show all articles

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

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

A wall of keyed card slots and plug-in modules in a bright integration lab, with one card lifted clear of its bay and held in the air above an open slot it has not yet entered

AI Agents & Systems

Typed Tools: Protocols as an Agent's Action Alphabet

An agent can do exactly what its tool interfaces let it propose, no more. The schema, the granularity, the retry semantics and the error surface are not plumbing around the intelligence — they are the boundary of it.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 8, 2026 · 20 min read

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