Abstract
The ability to use tools is fundamental for large language model (LLM) agents. Given a task, existing systems use LLMs to plan and generate tool calls, which are executed by real-world tools to complete the task. However, tool calls are prone to errors because they are generated primarily from the intrinsic capabilities of LLMs. Moreover, while it is useful to let LLMs iteratively refine the tool-call sequence using execution results from real tools, this process can be expensive and may cause unsafe side effects. To improve LLM tool calls and address issues caused by using real tools for refinement, we introduce Gecko, a stateful simulation environment that provides informative feedback for refining LLM tool calls before real execution. Specifically, Gecko combines rules and LLMs to check the validity of tool names and arguments, synthesize schema-conforming and state-consistent responses, and judge task completion against the user objective. These three types of feedback allow LLMs to refine their tool calls in simulation, forming a simple yet effective test-time scaling method named GATS. On BFCLv3 and -bench, GATS consistently improves the performance of various LLMs.