Vivarium AI

Part 3: The Tools

Nov 8, 2025

Posts in this series:

To Tool is Human

One thing humans do extremely well is create and use tools to achieve goals.

In Vivarium, a tool is a component that has an interface and can carry out an action. In Part 2 of this series, we covered aspects of using language as an interface.

Tools in Vivarium may be used by agents, but they can also be run by automation (i.e. scripts) or other facilities.

The definition of a tool is purposefully as broad as possible, while still keeping a clear distinction between agents, tools, and infrastructure.

These are some examples of tools:

  • Visual calculators (i.e. spreadsheets);
  • Creating or executing a workflow;
  • Proof assistant, model checker, or solver;
  • Data store;
  • Document generator.

A Tool by any Other Name Should Work the Same

Using language as the interface to tools offers many benefits.

While it is true that some APIs offer typed schemas to help reduce the likelihood of misusing (intentional or otherwise) the API, by itself, that does provide enough support to reason about the tool's capabilities.

There are also standards for documenting APIs, but then that is documentation for the API, not the API itself. And some API providers will offer a "staging" or "sandbox" version of the API, where costly or dangerous actions won't be taken on production data.

But with a language as the interface, particularly one carefully constructed for the capabilities of the tool, including the type system, it's possible to experiment robustly (e.g. does it parse, type-check, etc.) without ever invoking the actual tool.

And if there are competing tools that offer the same capabilities, but perhaps with a different implementation, using the same language makes substituting one for the other robust versus hoping that the two APIs are actually implemented the same even when their endpoints are the same.

The Whole System

Up to now, we've covered the idea of Vivarium as a whole, the agents, the language-as-interface, and the tools. Next up, the infrastructure component that brings it all together.