AI engineering glossary · Prompt context engineering
What is tool schema?
Tool schema: The machine-readable definition of a tool that is sent to the model: its name, a description, and a JSON Schema for its parameters. The model reads it to decide when to call the tool and how to fill in the arguments correctly.
Tool schema: an example
A schema names 'convert_currency' with required string fields 'from', 'to' and a number field 'amount'.
Related terms
More Prompt context engineering terms
- Tree of Thoughts
- User prompt
- XML tags in prompts
- Zero-shot chain-of-thought
- Zero-shot prompting
- Analogical prompting
- Assistant prefill
- Automatic prompt engineer
Where you learn it
Tool schema is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.