Coined here · 2026

Tool Creep/ noun

The gradual accumulation of tools in an AI agent until they crowd the context and degrade tool selection.

Scope creep was features nobody asked for.
Tool creep is tools your agent never needed — and can't stop tripping over.

The lineage

Agent picks the wrong tool for an obvious task. — (v2 shipped, but v1 is still tool #12)
Latency and cost creep up as tool schemas bloat the context window.
Two near-duplicate tools; the model flips between them at random.
Deprecated tools never got removed — they just… lingered.
Nobody on the team remembers what half the tools actually do.
Every new MCP server adds capability and noise. The noise compounds.

The fix isn't more tools. It's tool hygiene — treat your agent's toolbelt like a codebase, because it is one.

prune dedupe version scope per task audit

More tools ≠ smarter agent. Past a point, more tools = a confused agent.

A field guide to diagnosing & fixing tool creep is in the works. Get it first.

No spam. One email when the guide drops.