Smarter LLM Tool Extensions

A Smarter LLM Tool Extension is a Python package that adds tools to the LLMs of a Smarter platform. It has its own tools, settings, documentation, assets and lifecycle, and a platform administrator installs it at run time, from the web console’s Extensions page, by uploading it or from the Smarter Extension registry. See Extensibility for how Extensions differ from Plugins, and Managing Extensions for how administrators manage them.

These pages are for the developers who build Extensions. They follow one example from start to finish: the official weather Extension, whose get_weather tool is the tool that the OpenAI function calling guide describes, implemented for real. Its source is smarter-sh/smarter-extension-weather.

An Extension in Brief

smarter-extension-weather/
├── pyproject.toml          # name, version, tools, settings, compatibility
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
└── weather/                # the Python package
    ├── __init__.py         # its module docstring is the Extension's documentation
    ├── models.py           # the Pydantic models of the tool's arguments and result
    ├── services.py         # geocoding and the weather api
    └── tools.py            # the GetWeather tool

A tool is a class. Its docstring is the description that the LLM reads, its Pydantic arguments model is the JSON Schema of its parameters, and its call() method does the work:

class GetWeather(SmarterExtensionTool):
    """Get the current weather, and the forecast for the next 24 hours, for a location."""

    name = "get_weather"
    arguments_model = WeatherArguments

    def call(self, arguments: WeatherArguments, context: ExtensionContext) -> JsonValue:
        place = geocode(arguments.location, context.settings.google_maps_api_key.get_secret_value())
        found = weather(place, arguments.unit, context.settings.weather_api_url)
        return WeatherResult(location=place.address, current=found.current, ...).model_dump(mode="json")

Smarter does the rest: it offers the tool to the LLM as ext_weather_get_weather, validates the LLM’s arguments, runs the tool with the administrator’s settings and a timeout, returns the result, or an error that the LLM can recover from, and sends the signals that Smarter’s logs, progress messages and history record.

Developer Guide