# Tools ## What are tools? Tools enable AI agents to: | | | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Access External Data** | Web searches, web scraping, databases, APIs, files | | **Perform Actions** | Form submissions, code execution, API calls, custom functions | Tools have two forms: | **Custom Tools** | Developer-defined tools. Custom tools will require you to write code to handle the tool calls. | | ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **Hosted Tools** | WorkflowAI-built tools (e.g., *search-web*, *browser-text*). Hosted tools do not require any code or engineering effort. | ## Custom Tools Custom tools are tools specific to your application. You are responsible for running these tools when they are called by the AI agent. Adding a custom tool through code is currently only available with our Python SDK. Read the documentation for [adding custom tools](https://docs.workflowai.com/python-sdk/tools). ## Hosted Tools ### What hosted tools are available? WorklfowAI supports and manages the following tools: * `@browser-text` allows fetching the content of a web page (text-only) * `@google-search` allows performing a web search using Google's search API * `@perplexity-sonar-pro` allows performing a web search using Perplexity's Sonar Pro model We're working on adding more tools, if you need any specfic tool, please open a discussion on [GitHub](https://github.com/workflowai/workflowai/discussions/categories/ideas) or [Discord](https://discord.gg/auuf8DREZh) ### How to enable tools? Tools can be added in the Playground by either: 1. Describing the use case to the playground chat agent 2. Under "Instructions" tap on the tools you want to enable. {% embed url="" %}