Tool Call Strategies

The all, sequential, and llm_decides strategies and how to register custom ones.

Tool call strategies control how GenericAgent invokes tools on a given MCP server during skill execution. For regular (non-skill) queries the agent uses its own agentic loop with native tool_calls semantics — the strategy field is not consulted in that path.

The three built-in strategies

Name	Behaviour
`all`	Calls every configured tool concurrently via `asyncio.gather`. Errors on individual tools are caught and reported without stopping the others.
`sequential`	Calls tools in order, passing previous results as `previous_results` context to each subsequent tool. Use when one tool's output informs the next.
`llm_decides`	Asks the LLM which tools to call and with what arguments. Falls back to `all` if the LLM call fails or returns invalid JSON.

Configuring a strategy per MCP server

agents:
catalog:
  mcp_servers:
    - name: product-db
      url: https://db.example.com/mcp
      tool_call_strategy: sequential
      tools:
        - name: search_catalog
        - name: filter_results
        - name: rank_by_score

The strategy applies to that server's tools within skill steps. Each server in an agent's mcp_servers list can use a different strategy.

The OrchidToolCallStrategy ABC

class OrchidToolCallStrategy(ABC):
    @abstractmethod
    async def execute(
        self,
        client: OrchidMCPToolCaller,
        tools: list[OrchidToolConfig],
        query: str,
        auth: OrchidAuthContext,
        *,
        agent_name: str = "",
        server_config: OrchidMCPServerConfig | None = None,
        chat_model: Any | None = None,
    ) -> dict[str, Any]:
        ...

Adding a custom strategy

Subclass OrchidToolCallStrategy and implement execute()
Register it by name via register_strategy()
Reference the name in agents.yaml

from orchid_ai.agents.strategies import register_strategy, OrchidToolCallStrategy

class PriorityStrategy(OrchidToolCallStrategy):
    async def execute(self, client, tools, query, auth, **kwargs):
        # call the highest-priority tool first, then the rest in parallel
        ...

register_strategy("priority", PriorityStrategy)

agents:
triage:
  mcp_servers:
    - name: kb
      tool_call_strategy: priority
      tools:
        - name: search_kb
        - name: get_article

Strategies are looked up by name at execution time from STRATEGY_REGISTRY. An unknown name falls back to all with a warning log.