This is Part 7 of my series on the Microsoft Agent Framework. You can read the original post over on lukaswalter.dev .

When words are not enough

So far, our agent can answer questions, stream responses, remember conversations, reduce chat history, and receive dynamic context.

But it still has one major limitation: it can only talk.

An LLM does not know your current application state by default. It cannot query your database, calculate values from your domain model, or place an order unless your application exposes that capability.

This is where tools come in.

A tool is a controlled C# function that the model can request during a run. The model does not execute arbitrary code.…