Story · arXiv (via papers.cool)
Is Bash All You Need? An Empirical Study of Tool Interfaces for Enterprise Digital Worker Agents (arXiv (via papers.cool))
arXiv, 5 pp · Story page
Five tool interfaces for enterprise agents, compared on TheAgentCompany and APEX-Agents with Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5.
In plain words
- Researchers found that artificial intelligence handled workplace tasks better with general computer commands than with specially designed tools.
- General commands let the software write instructions for the computer instead of choosing from a fixed list of actions.
- Adding specialized tools to the command option produced no detectable overall improvement.
- The results favor computer commands for office automation when teams can safely limit where those commands run.
Appeared in
- A shell beats a typed tool catalog, and agents barely report their work
Sep 16, 2026 · lead story
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