toolsgen 0.2.1

Generate tool-calling datasets from OpenAI-compatible tool specs

🛠️ ToolsGen

A modular Python library for synthesizing tool-calling datasets from JSON tool definitions using an LLM-as-a-judge pipeline. Designed for OpenAI-compatible APIs.

⚠️ Development Status: This project is under active development. The API is not yet stable and may undergo significant changes. Breaking changes may occur between versions.

Overview

ToolsGen automates the creation of tool-calling datasets for training and evaluating language models. It generates realistic user requests, produces corresponding tool calls, and evaluates their quality using a multi-dimensional rubric system.

Key Features

• Multi-role LLM Pipeline: Separate models for problem generation, tool calling, and quality evaluation
• Flexible Sampling Strategies: Random, parameter-aware, and semantic clustering approaches
• LLM-as-a-Judge Scoring: Rubric-based evaluation with structured outputs
• OpenAI-Compatible: Works with OpenAI API and compatible providers (Azure OpenAI, local models via vLLM, etc.)
• Hugging Face Ready: JSONL output format compatible with Hugging Face datasets
• Configurable Quality Control: Adjustable scoring thresholds and retry mechanisms
• Train/Val Splitting: Built-in dataset splitting for model training workflows
• Parallel Generation: Multiprocessing pipeline to accelerate dataset creation on multi-core hosts

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• OpenAI API key (or compatible API endpoint)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/atasoglu/toolsgen.git
cd toolsgen
pip install .

Usage

CLI Usage

# Check version
toolsgen version

# Set your OpenAI API key
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

# Generate dataset with default settings
toolsgen generate \
  --tools tools.json \
  --out output_dir \
  --num 100

# Advanced: Use different models and temperatures for each role
toolsgen generate \
  --tools tools.json \
  --out output_dir \
  --num 1000 \
  --strategy param_aware \
  --seed 42 \
  --train-split 0.9 \
  --workers 4 \
  --worker-batch-size 8 \
  --problem-model gpt-4o-mini --problem-temp 0.9 \
  --caller-model gpt-4o --caller-temp 0.3 \
  --judge-model gpt-4o --judge-temp 0.0

# Parallel generation with 6 workers processing four samples per task
toolsgen generate \
  --tools tools.json \
  --out output_dir \
  --num 500 \
  --workers 6 \
  --worker-batch-size 4

Python API Usage

import os
from pathlib import Path
from toolsgen.core import GenerationConfig, ModelConfig, generate_dataset

os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key-here"

# Configuration
tools_path = Path("tools.json")
output_dir = Path("output")

gen_config = GenerationConfig(
    num_samples=100,
    strategy="random",
    seed=42,
    train_split=0.9,  # 90% train, 10% validation
    batch_size=10,  # optional: iterate tools in batches
    shuffle_tools=True,  # optional: reshuffle tools between batches
    num_workers=4,  # enable multiprocessing
    worker_batch_size=2,  # samples per worker task
)

model_config = ModelConfig(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    temperature=0.7,
)

# Generate dataset from file
manifest = generate_dataset(output_dir, gen_config, model_config, tools_path=tools_path)

# Or use tools list directly (alternative to tools_path)
# from toolsgen.schema import ToolSpec
# tools = [ToolSpec(...), ToolSpec(...)]
# manifest = generate_dataset(output_dir, gen_config, model_config, tools=tools)

print(f"Generated {manifest['num_generated']}/{manifest['num_requested']} records")
print(f"Failed: {manifest['num_failed']} attempts")

See examples/ directory for complete working examples.

Note: The examples in examples/ use python-dotenv for convenience (load API keys from .env file). Install it with pip install python-dotenv if you want to use this approach.

Output Format

Dataset Files (JSONL)

Each line in train.jsonl (or val.jsonl) is a JSON record:

{
  "id": "record_000001",
  "language": "english",
  "tools": [...],
  "messages": [
    {"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather in San Francisco?"}
  ],
  "assistant_calls": [
    {
      "id": "call_abc123",
      "type": "function",
      "function": {
        "name": "get_weather",
        "arguments": "{\"location\": \"San Francisco, CA\"}"
      }
    }
  ],
  "problem_metadata": {"generated": true, "user_request": "..."},
  "judge": {
    "tool_relevance": 0.4,
    "argument_quality": 0.38,
    "clarity": 0.2,
    "score": 0.98,
    "verdict": "accept",
    "rationale": "Excellent tool selection and argument quality",
    "rubric_version": "0.1.0",
    "model": "gpt-4o",
    "temperature": 0.0
  },
  "quality_tags": [],
  "tools_metadata": {"num_tools": 5}
}

Manifest File

manifest.json contains generation metadata:

{
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "num_requested": 1000,
  "num_generated": 987,
  "num_failed": 13,
  "strategy": "param_aware",
  "seed": 42,
  "train_split": 0.9,
  "tools_count": 15,
  "models": {
    "problem_generator": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "tool_caller": "gpt-4o",
    "judge": "gpt-4o"
  },
  "splits": {
    "train": 888,
    "val": 99
  }
}

Testing

# Run all tests with coverage
pytest --cov=src

# Run specific test file
pytest tests/test_generator.py

# Run with verbose output
pytest -v

Development

# Install development dependencies
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

# Run tests with coverage
pytest --cov=src

# Run code quality checks
ruff check src tests --fix
ruff format src tests

Architecture

For detailed information about the system architecture, pipeline, and core components, see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Roadmap

Planned Features

• Multi-turn conversation support
• Custom prompt template system
• Parallel generation with multiprocessing
• Additional sampling strategies (coverage-based, difficulty-based)
• Integration with Hugging Face Hub for direct dataset uploads
• Support for more LLM providers (Anthropic, Cohere, etc.)
• Web UI for dataset inspection and curation
• Advanced filtering and deduplication

Known Limitations

• Single-turn conversations only
• English-focused prompts (multilingual support is experimental)
• No built-in tool execution or validation
• Limited to OpenAI-compatible APIs

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please note that the API is still evolving. Before starting major work, please open an issue to discuss your proposed changes.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Citation

If you use ToolsGen in your research, please cite:

@software{toolsgen2025,
  title = {ToolsGen: Synthetic Tool-Calling Dataset Generator},
  author = {Ataşoğlu, Ahmet},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://github.com/atasoglu/toolsgen}
}