---
license: apache-2.0
task_categories:
- text-generation
language:
- en
tags:
- tool-calling
- function-calling
- trl
- sft
size_categories:
- n<1K
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: data/train-*
dataset_info:
  features:
  - name: messages
    list: json
  - name: tools
    list:
    - name: type
      dtype: string
    - name: function
      struct:
      - name: name
        dtype: string
      - name: description
        dtype: string
      - name: parameters
        struct:
        - name: type
          dtype: string
        - name: properties
          dtype: json
        - name: required
          list: string
      - name: return
        struct:
        - name: type
          dtype: string
        - name: description
          dtype: string
  splits:
  - name: train
    num_bytes: 900362
    num_examples: 500
  download_size: 898676
  dataset_size: 900362
---

# tool-calls-mini

500 synthetic tool-calling conversations in [TRL's conversational format](https://huggingface.co/docs/trl/dataset_formats#tool-calling),
for supervised fine-tuning. Built to be *coherent*: every tool result is a plausible
function of the arguments it was called with, and every final answer reflects that
result — so the set teaches when to call a tool, not just what a call looks like.

## Format

Each row has `messages` and `tools`. An assistant turn carries `tool_calls` instead of
`content`; the tool replies as a `tool` role turn with `name` and `content`. The
`tools` column holds JSON schemas generated with `transformers.utils.get_json_schema`.

```python
{
  "messages": [
    {"role": "user", "content": "How much is 2400 euros in yen?"},
    {"role": "assistant", "tool_calls": [
        {"type": "function", "function": {"name": "convert_currency",
         "arguments": {"amount": 2400.0, "from_currency": "EUR", "to_currency": "JPY"}}}]},
    {"role": "tool", "name": "convert_currency",
     "content": "2400 EUR = 402,168.00 JPY at 167.57 JPY/EUR."},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "2,400 euros is about ¥402,168 at today's rate."}
  ],
  "tools": [ ... ]
}
```

## Composition

| shape | rows | what it teaches |
| --- | --- | --- |
| single | 232 | one call, one result, one answer |
| sequential | 73 | a second call whose arguments depend on the first result |
| parallel | 51 | several calls in one assistant turn |
| failure | 57 | the tool errors and the assistant says so rather than inventing |
| clarify | 44 | a required argument is missing, so ask before calling |
| no_call | 43 | tools are available and none is the right move |

457 rows contain at least one call; 43 deliberately contain none. Those 43 are the
point: a dataset of nothing but successful calls teaches a model to reach for a tool at
every turn, and one with no error cases teaches it to trust every result.

16 tools across weather, travel, calendar, email, finance, database, translation and
logistics. Each row offers the tools it needs plus 1–4 unrelated distractors (mean 3.6
offered), so the right call can't be inferred from the schema list alone. Roughly a
quarter of rows carry a system prompt.

## Verified

All 500 rows pass TRL's SFT preparation with `assistant_only_loss=True` — no row is
fully masked, and the mask covers the `tool_calls` turns as well as the final text
answer. Mean 698 tokens per row (Qwen3 tokenizer), 12.4% of tokens supervised. No row
calls a tool that isn't offered in its own `tools` column.

## Caveats

Synthetic and template-composed: the entity pools are finite, so phrasings recur with
different arguments, and the tool results are plausible rather than real. Suited to
teaching the tool-calling *protocol* and call/no-call judgement; not a benchmark, and
not a substitute for traces from a real tool-using system.