Awareness

Problem

An agent that has no reliable picture of its own current capabilities fails in two predictable directions. It promises to invoke tools it does not actually have, fabricating plausible function calls that error out at dispatch. Or it forgets that it does have a particular tool and falls back on weaker workarounds when the right capability was available all along. Both failure modes are invisible to the model because nothing in its context tells it what is really wired up at this moment.

Solution

Persist explicit state about: available tools (with descriptions), the environment (what host, what user, what permissions), the current task, and the agent's own identity. Refresh on capability changes. Inject relevant slices of awareness into each turn's context.

When to use

• The agent regularly hallucinates tools it does not have or forgets tools it does.
• Tool palette, environment, or permissions change at runtime and the agent must reflect the current state.
• Downstream behaviour depends on the agent reasoning explicitly about what it can and cannot do.