How to modify chat RAG flow to call multiple tools?

[hugokoopmans]

I am working with the chatreadretrieveread approach. my usecase is that i am discussing with the user car details. we ingest a lot of details about cars and sometimes we need the licence plate of the car so we can call an custom api to get some specific car details via this api.

thanks to @pamelafox her example #2738 (comment) we have implemented this.

but now we find that the default tool is actually most of the time not called, because the default behaviour is that after the get_search_query() the approach bluntly follows STEP 2 and STEP 3 regardless if the 'search_sources' tool is invoked or not.

i do not understand how this then is supposed to work by design with a second tool that is NOT search document but is searching an external API ?

or we move step 2 and 3 inside the 'get_search_query' in the if tool is 'search_sources'?

or we add more logic to skip step 2 and 3 if we are NOT doing a search_sources ... not sure what fits best in the desired long term design?

any suggestions @pamelafox ? your help is much appriciated and very welkom here

[hugokoopmans]

nobody here?

[pamelafox]

I can make a branch that is more what you are looking for, a non-search related function. I'll update shortly.

[pamelafox]

@hugokoopmans Here's a branch that shows a non-search tool:
#2758

That branch assumes you only want to use a single tool at a time. If you want to call multiple tools, then you need to decide if you want a pre-determined sequence, or more complicated, agentic tool calling in a loop.