The Tool Illusion: Rethinking Tool Use in Web Agents
As web agents rapidly evolve, an increasing body of work has moved beyond conventional atomic browser interactions and explored tool use as a higher-level action paradigm. Although prior studies have shown the promise of tools, their conclusions are often drawn from limited experimental scales and sometimes non-comparable settings. As a result, several fundamental questions remain unclear: i) whether tools provide consistent gains for web agents, ii) what practical design principles characterize effective tools, and iii) what side effects tool use may introduce. To establish a stronger empirical foundation for future research, we revisit tool use in web agents through an extensive and car...
| Authors | Renze Lou, Baolin Peng, Wenlin Yao et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 3 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 16 July 2026 |
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