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Builtin Tools

Builtin tools are native tools provided by LLM providers that can be used to enhance your agent's capabilities. Unlike common tools, which are custom implementations that PydanticAI executes, builtin tools are executed directly by the model provider.

Overview

PydanticAI supports two types of builtin tools:

These tools are passed to the agent via the builtin_tools parameter and are executed by the model provider's infrastructure.

Provider Support

Not all model providers support builtin tools. If you use a builtin tool with an unsupported provider, PydanticAI will raise a UserError when you try to run the agent.

Web Search Tool

The WebSearchTool allows your agent to search the web, making it ideal for queries that require up-to-date data.

Provider Support

Provider Supported Notes
OpenAI ✅ Full feature support
Anthropic ✅ Full feature support
Groq ✅ Limited parameter support
Google ❌ Not supported
Bedrock ❌ Not supported
Mistral ❌ Not supported
Cohere ❌ Not supported
HuggingFace ❌ Not supported

Groq Support

To use web search capabilities with Groq, you need to use the compound models.

Usage

web_search_basic.py
from pydantic_ai import Agent, WebSearchTool

agent = Agent('anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-0', builtin_tools=[WebSearchTool()])

result = agent.run_sync('Give me a sentence with the biggest news in AI this week.')
# > Scientists have developed a universal AI detector that can identify deepfake videos.

Configuration Options

The WebSearchTool supports several configuration parameters:

web_search_configured.py
from pydantic_ai import Agent, WebSearchTool, WebSearchUserLocation

agent = Agent(
    'anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-0',
    builtin_tools=[
        WebSearchTool(
            search_context_size='high',
            user_location=WebSearchUserLocation(
                city='San Francisco',
                country='US',
                region='CA',
                timezone='America/Los_Angeles',
            ),
            blocked_domains=['example.com', 'spam-site.net'],
            allowed_domains=None,  # Cannot use both blocked_domains and allowed_domains with Anthropic
            max_uses=5,  # Anthropic only: limit tool usage
        )
    ],
)

result = agent.run_sync('Use the web to get the current time.')
# > In San Francisco, it's 8:21:41 pm PDT on Wednesday, August 6, 2025.

Parameter Support by Provider

Parameter OpenAI Anthropic Groq
search_context_size ✅ ❌ ❌
user_location ✅ ✅ ❌
blocked_domains ❌ ✅ ✅
allowed_domains ❌ ✅ ✅
max_uses ❌ ✅ ❌

Anthropic Domain Filtering

With Anthropic, you can only use either blocked_domains or allowed_domains, not both.

Code Execution Tool

The CodeExecutionTool enables your agent to execute code in a secure environment, making it perfect for computational tasks, data analysis, and mathematical operations.

Provider Support

Provider Supported
OpenAI ✅
Anthropic ✅
Google ✅
Groq ❌
Bedrock ❌
Mistral ❌
Cohere ❌
HuggingFace ❌

Usage

code_execution_basic.py
from pydantic_ai import Agent, CodeExecutionTool

agent = Agent('anthropic:claude-sonnet-4-0', builtin_tools=[CodeExecutionTool()])

result = agent.run_sync('Calculate the factorial of 15 and show your work')
# > The factorial of 15 is **1,307,674,368,000**.

API Reference

For complete API documentation, see the API Reference.