CCARF Practice Question

Paper 1 · Question 50

D2 Tool Design & MCP Integration · Paper 1

A customer support agent has two tools: get_customer_profile (returns name, email, preferences) and get_customer_orders (returns order history with statuses). Users frequently ask 'Tell me about customer X', and the agent calls both tools sequentially, doubling response time. 90% of 'tell me about' queries only need the profile. What is the best approach?

• A.Consolidate both tools into a single get_customer_info tool that returns all customer data in one call.
• B.Refine the descriptions so get_customer_profile is the default and get_customer_orders is order-specific.
• C.Add a system prompt instruction: 'When a user says tell me about, only call get_customer_profile.'
• D.Set tool_choice to forced selection of get_customer_profile for all turns to prevent unnecessary order lookups.

Show answer & explanations

Correct answer: B

A: Consolidation returns order data on every call, wasting resources for the 90% of queries that only need profile data. It also increases the response payload size unnecessarily.

B: Refining tool descriptions with clear defaults is the lowest-effort fix. get_customer_profile should be marked the default for general 'tell me about' queries, directing the agent to call only the profile tool unless order details are explicitly requested.

C: Hard-coding keyword-to-tool mappings in the system prompt is brittle. It does not generalise to other phrasings like 'What do you know about customer X?' and will break if tool names change.

D: Forced selection prevents the agent from ever calling get_customer_orders, even when users specifically ask about orders. This solves the over-calling problem by crippling legitimate functionality.

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