The document-analysis agent has a single analyze_document tool that accepts a document and a free-text...

Option A removes the semantic ambiguity created by one generic tool performing three substantially different operations. Each replacement tool can have a distinct name, focused description, appropriate required parameters, and an output schema designed for its task. For example, extract_data_points can return typed records, while verify_claim_against_source can return a verdict, supporting excerpt, and source location.

Anthropic’s tool-design guidance recommends thoughtful tools with clear, distinct purposes and natural task boundaries. Ambiguous or overlapping capabilities make it harder for agents to select the correct operation and interpret its results consistently.

Option B improves the existing interface, but the implementation and result contract remain overloaded, increasing the possibility that the model or tool will mix behavior across modes. Option C adds another probabilistic classification stage without repairing the underlying interface. Option D may reduce some errors, but free-text interpretation remains the principal control mechanism. Purpose-specific tools encode the intended operation directly into the callable interface, permit strict schemas tailored to each result type, and make evaluation failures easier to diagnose. This produces a stronger contract between the agent and deterministic document-processing system.

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