PRODUCTION SCENARIO
An assistant exposes search_customer(name, phone, email) and lookup_client_record(full_name, contact_info). Both query the same customer table in the same service and return the same fields, and their identifiers overlap: a phone number is accepted by either. Production logs show the model calling both in one turn, or alternating between them across identical requests.
Which change to the tool surface fixes this?
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Answer: Replace both with one get_customer whose schema names each accepted identifier
Two tools over the same table, returning the same fields, with overlapping identifiers, are one tool described twice; consolidating removes a decision the model should never have been handed, and fewer, more capable tools are the documented way to cut selection ambiguity. Detailed descriptions are the single biggest lever on tool performance and are the repair when two tools genuinely differ and are merely described badly; here they ask the model to draw a distinction that does not exist. Dropping one of the pair is right when the survivor already accepts every identifier the other took, and search_customer names neither full_name nor contact_info, so those callers lose their entry point. Namespacing is for a surface spanning several services, and both of these live in one.