LLM Tools (Function Calling)

A tool is a function or operation that can be called directly or by a language model (LLMs). The Spice runtime has several tools available by default, giving LLMs access to various parts of the runtime. Tools can also be added or configured by the user by declaring them in the tools section of spicepod.yaml.

For details about providing LLMs tool access, see Language Model Tools.

For details on tool specifications, see the Tools Spicepod Reference.

Available Tools

Name	Description	Default Group
list_datasets	List all available datasets in the runtime.	auto
sql	Execute SQL queries on the runtime.	auto
table_schema	Get the schema of a specific SQL table.	auto
search	Searches a configured dataset based on an input query.	auto
sample_distinct_columns	Generate a synthetic sample of data with distinct values.	auto
random_sample	Sample random rows from a table.	auto
top_n_sample	Sample the top N rows from a table based on a specified ordering.	auto
memory:load	Retrieve all stored memories from the last time period.	memory
memory:store	Store information from LLM interaction(s) for future reference.	memory
websearch	Search the web for information. (Deprecated)	-

Tool Groups

Tool groups are predefined sets of tools that can be provided to LLMs in a single tool name. For example, the auto tool group provides all default tools to the LLM (see above table).

models:
  - name: full-runtime
    from: openai:gpt-4o
    params:
      tools: auto # Automatically choose direct or registry-based discovery

Available tool groups

Name	Description
auto	Automatically choose between direct tools and searchable registry discovery based on the number of tools and embedding model availability.
all	All built-in and Spicepod-configured tools, provided directly to the LLM.
search_registry	Use searchable tool registry discovery via tool_search and tool_invoke meta-tools. Requires an embedding model (see tool_embedding_model).
memory	Memory tools for storing and retrieving information across conversations.
MCP	Tools provided from an MCP server. Can be run within Spice, or connected to over HTTP(s) SSE

For details on auto, all, and search_registry tool modes, see Language Model Tools.