How to use tools

Prerequisites

This guide assumes familiarity with the following:

This section will cover how to create conversational agents: chatbots that can interact with other systems and APIs using tools.

Setup

For this guide, we’ll be using an OpenAI tools agent with a single tool for searching the web. The default will be powered by Tavily, but you can switch it out for any similar tool. The rest of this section will assume you’re using Tavily.

You’ll need to sign up for an account on the Tavily website, and install the following packages:

npm
yarn
pnpm

npm i @langchain/core @langchain/openai langchain

yarn add @langchain/core @langchain/openai langchain

pnpm add @langchain/core @langchain/openai langchain

import { TavilySearchResults } from "@langchain/community/tools/tavily_search";
import { ChatOpenAI } from "@langchain/openai";

const tools = [
  new TavilySearchResults({
    maxResults: 1,
  }),
];

const llm = new ChatOpenAI({
  model: "gpt-3.5-turbo-1106",
  temperature: 0,
});

To make our agent conversational, we must also choose a prompt with a placeholder for our chat history. Here’s an example:

import { ChatPromptTemplate } from "@langchain/core/prompts";

// Adapted from https://smith.langchain.com/hub/hwchase17/openai-tools-agent
const prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages([
  [
    "system",
    "You are a helpful assistant. You may not need to use tools for every query - the user may just want to chat!",
  ],
  ["placeholder", "{messages}"],
  ["placeholder", "{agent_scratchpad}"],
]);

Great! Now let’s assemble our agent:

import { AgentExecutor, createOpenAIToolsAgent } from "langchain/agents";

const agent = await createOpenAIToolsAgent({
  llm,
  tools,
  prompt,
});

const agentExecutor = new AgentExecutor({ agent, tools });

Running the agent

Now that we’ve set up our agent, let’s try interacting with it! It can handle both trivial queries that require no lookup:

import { HumanMessage } from "@langchain/core/messages";

await agentExecutor.invoke({
  messages: [new HumanMessage("I'm Nemo!")],
});

{
  messages: [
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "I'm Nemo!",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "I'm Nemo!",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    }
  ],
  output: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?"
}

Or, it can use of the passed search tool to get up to date information if needed:

await agentExecutor.invoke({
  messages: [
    new HumanMessage(
      "What is the current conservation status of the Great Barrier Reef?"
    ),
  ],
});

{
  messages: [
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "What is the current conservation status of the Great Barrier Reef?",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "What is the current conservation status of the Great Barrier Reef?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    }
  ],
  output: "The current conservation status of the Great Barrier Reef is a cause for concern. The International "... 801 more characters
}

Conversational responses

Because our prompt contains a placeholder for chat history messages, our agent can also take previous interactions into account and respond conversationally like a standard chatbot:

import { AIMessage } from "@langchain/core/messages";

await agentExecutor.invoke({
  messages: [
    new HumanMessage("I'm Nemo!"),
    new AIMessage("Hello Nemo! How can I assist you today?"),
    new HumanMessage("What is my name?"),
  ],
});

{
  messages: [
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "I'm Nemo!",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "I'm Nemo!",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    },
    AIMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "Hello Nemo! How can I assist you today?",
        tool_calls: [],
        invalid_tool_calls: [],
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "Hello Nemo! How can I assist you today?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {},
      tool_calls: [],
      invalid_tool_calls: []
    },
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "What is my name?",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "What is my name?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    }
  ],
  output: "Your name is Nemo!"
}

If preferred, you can also wrap the agent executor in a RunnableWithMessageHistory class to internally manage history messages. First, we need to slightly modify the prompt to take a separate input variable so that the wrapper can parse which input value to store as history:

// Adapted from https://smith.langchain.com/hub/hwchase17/openai-tools-agent
const prompt2 = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages([
  [
    "system",
    "You are a helpful assistant. You may not need to use tools for every query - the user may just want to chat!",
  ],
  ["placeholder", "{chat_history}"],
  ["human", "{input}"],
  ["placeholder", "{agent_scratchpad}"],
]);

const agent2 = await createOpenAIToolsAgent({
  llm,
  tools,
  prompt: prompt2,
});

const agentExecutor2 = new AgentExecutor({ agent: agent2, tools });

Then, because our agent executor has multiple outputs, we also have to set the outputMessagesKey property when initializing the wrapper:

import { ChatMessageHistory } from "langchain/stores/message/in_memory";
import { RunnableWithMessageHistory } from "@langchain/core/runnables";

const demoEphemeralChatMessageHistory = new ChatMessageHistory();

const conversationalAgentExecutor = new RunnableWithMessageHistory({
  runnable: agentExecutor2,
  getMessageHistory: (_sessionId) => demoEphemeralChatMessageHistory,
  inputMessagesKey: "input",
  outputMessagesKey: "output",
  historyMessagesKey: "chat_history",
});

await conversationalAgentExecutor.invoke(
  { input: "I'm Nemo!" },
  { configurable: { sessionId: "unused" } }
);

{
  input: "I'm Nemo!",
  chat_history: [
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "I'm Nemo!",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "I'm Nemo!",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    },
    AIMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?",
        tool_calls: [],
        invalid_tool_calls: [],
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {},
      tool_calls: [],
      invalid_tool_calls: []
    }
  ],
  output: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?"
}

await conversationalAgentExecutor.invoke(
  { input: "What is my name?" },
  { configurable: { sessionId: "unused" } }
);

{
  input: "What is my name?",
  chat_history: [
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "I'm Nemo!",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "I'm Nemo!",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    },
    AIMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?",
        tool_calls: [],
        invalid_tool_calls: [],
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "Hello Nemo! It's great to meet you. How can I assist you today?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {},
      tool_calls: [],
      invalid_tool_calls: []
    },
    HumanMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "What is my name?",
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "What is my name?",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {}
    },
    AIMessage {
      lc_serializable: true,
      lc_kwargs: {
        content: "Your name is Nemo!",
        tool_calls: [],
        invalid_tool_calls: [],
        additional_kwargs: {},
        response_metadata: {}
      },
      lc_namespace: [ "langchain_core", "messages" ],
      content: "Your name is Nemo!",
      name: undefined,
      additional_kwargs: {},
      response_metadata: {},
      tool_calls: [],
      invalid_tool_calls: []
    }
  ],
  output: "Your name is Nemo!"
}

Next steps

You’ve now learned how to create chatbots with tool-use capabilities.

For more, check out the other guides in this section, including how to add history to your chatbots.

How to use tools

Setup

Running the agent

Conversational responses

Next steps

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Setup​

Running the agent​

Conversational responses​

Next steps​

Was this page helpful?

You can also leave detailed feedback on GitHub.

Setup

Running the agent

Conversational responses

Next steps