Definition
Plain language
A helper agent whose only job is to build new tools for other AI agents to use, on the fly.
As stated in the literature
In CoAgent, a privileged read-only agent that incrementally constructs a library of footprint-declared, invertible tools as worker agents encounter tasks, enabling concurrency control and self-healing on systems that ship without a structured tool interface.
Why it matters: It lets a system create the tools it needs on the fly, so agents can operate reliably even on software that wasn't built to be controlled by them.
For example, when worker agents keep needing to read a certain kind of log file, this helper builds them a reusable tool for it instead of making them improvise each time.
Heard on the show
“This is the ToolSmith piece.”Episode 150 — Don't Kill the Loser: A Different Way to Handle Two AI Agents Colliding