Parallel Tool Calling

Master concurrent tool execution to build faster, more efficient AI agents

The Decision Framework

Not every task benefits from parallel execution. The key is identifying independence — can operations run without waiting for each other?

Quick Decision Tree

1
Are the tools independent?
✓ Yes → Continue to step 2
✗ No → Use sequential execution
2
Is the workload I/O bound?
✓ Yes (API calls, database) → Continue to step 3
✗ No (heavy CPU work) → Consider parallelism carefully
3
Do you have multiple tasks?
✓ Yes (3+ tools) → Use parallel execution
✗ No (1-2 tools) → Overhead might not be worth it
Result: Use Parallel Execution!
Your tasks are independent, I/O bound, and numerous enough to benefit from parallelism.

Interactive: Scenario Analyzer

Click on scenarios to see whether they benefit from parallel execution

Data Aggregation

Fetch data from multiple sources for a unified view

Sequential Workflow

Each step depends on the previous result

Multi-Source Search

Search across multiple databases or APIs

Batch File Processing

Process multiple files independently

Chained Dependencies

Each operation uses output from previous

Multiple Validation Checks

Run several independent validation rules

Common Parallel Patterns

📊

Data Aggregation

Fetch data from multiple sources and combine

✓ Highly parallelizable
🔍

Multi-Source Search

Search across different databases/APIs

✓ Highly parallelizable

Validation Checks

Run independent validation rules

✓ Highly parallelizable
📁

Batch Processing

Process multiple files/items independently

✓ Highly parallelizable