Topic
Function Calling & Tool Use
6 posts on function calling & tool use — part of glossary on the n4n AI blog.
OpenAI function calling vs Claude tool use
Technical comparison of OpenAI function calling and Claude tool use across schema design, execution model, streaming, costs, and ecosystem — with a clear verdict by use case.
How to define tool schemas for GPT-4o and Claude
Learn to define tool schemas for GPT-4o and Claude with step-by-step code examples, parameter validation, and cross-provider compatibility patterns.
How Gemini function calling differs from OpenAI's
A head-to-head technical comparison of Gemini and OpenAI function calling — schema differences, parallel calls, streaming behavior, tool choice modes, and when to use each.
Function calling vs agents: what's the difference
A practitioner's comparison of function calling and AI agents across capabilities, cost, latency, ergonomics, and ecosystem — with a decision framework for engineers.
Function calling explained: how LLMs call external tools
A technical explainer of function calling in LLMs — how models invoke external tools, the JSON schema contract, execution patterns, and common pitfalls engineers encounter.
A beginner's guide to LLM tool use
A practical, code-first walkthrough of LLM tool use — from function calling schemas to parallel execution, error handling, and production patterns.
More topics in glossary
- Structured Outputs & JSON Mode19
- AI Agents Fundamentals12
- Hallucination in LLMs11
- Sampling Parameters: Top-p, Top-k & Penalties11
- Context Window & Context Length10
- Fine-Tuning Fundamentals9
- Foundation Models: Base vs Instruct vs Chat9
- Model Families & Naming Conventions: GPT-5, Claude, Gemini 3, Llama 4, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Grok9
- Grounding & Fact-Checking in AI8
- LLM Benchmarks: MMLU, HumanEval, SWE-bench & GPQA8
- Max Tokens, Stop Sequences & Output Truncation8
- Quantization Formats: GGUF, GPTQ, AWQ & INT4/INT88