What should an agent do when two tools disagree?

Reddit r/AI_Agents News

Summary

The article discusses how AI agents should handle conflicting tool outputs by preserving both values with metadata and escalating based on thresholds, questioning whether this policy belongs in agent prompts or deterministic code.

Suppose a research agent gets conflicting values from two APIs with similar freshness. Silently choosing one hides uncertainty; asking the user every time defeats the point of automation. A reasonable default seems to be: preserve both values, attach timestamps and source IDs, then escalate only when the difference crosses a decision threshold. What belongs in that conflict policy, and should it live in the agent prompt or in deterministic code?
Original Article

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