The Five Rules of Ultravox
Tools are Just Functions
The Five Rules of Ultravox
Tools are Just Functions
Key concepts to understand before building a voice AI agent.
The fourth rule of building with Ultravox: “Tools are Just Functions”.
Tools in Ultravox (also known as function calling) are a powerful way to extend your agents' capabilities by connecting them to external services and systems. At their core, tools are simply functions that agents can invoke to perform specific actions or retrieve information.
Here are some of the things you can do with tools:
Any functionality you can encapsulate in a function can be exposed to your agents as a tool. Addtionally, Ultravox automatically calls the underlying function so you don't have to sweat gluing things together.
Here are some of the things you can do with tools:
Communicate with the Outside world
Lookup the weather, get movie times, create calendar events, or send emails.
Order Lookup
Lookup orders, backordered items, or provide shipment updates.
Knowledge Base
Consult product and support documentation for contextual support.
Create Support Case
Open tailored support cases for human follow-up.
Transfer Call
Hand-off or escalate calls to human support agents.
End Call
End calls due to user inactivity or after successful resolution.
Any functionality you can encapsulate in a function can be exposed to your agents as a tool. Addtionally, Ultravox automatically calls the underlying function so you don't have to sweat gluing things together.
Versatile? Check. Powerful? Check. Easy to Implement? Check.