Federico Mariani created CAMEL-23382:
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Summary: Unified Camel AI tool abstraction for route-based tools across AI components
Key: CAMEL-23382
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-23382
Project: Camel
Issue Type: New Feature
Reporter: Federico Mariani
tldr; as an user of camel-langchain4j, or camel-spring-ai or camel-openai, I'd expect the same behaviour and workflow when implementing tools.
Currently, _camel-langchain4j-tools_ and _camel-spring-ai-tools_ independently implement the same pattern: Camel routes register as LLM-invokable tools via a consumer endpoint, a singleton registry (_CamelToolExecutorCache_) maps tags to tool specs, and a producer dispatches tool calls to the matching route. Each module has its own duplicated copy of this registry and specification classes. *camel-openai* only supports external MCP server tools and has no way to use Camel routes as tools.
This issue proposes extracting a shared, framework-agnostic tool abstraction (*camel-ai-tools*) that all AI components can use:
- *ai-tools:toolName* consumer endpoint — defines a Camel route as an LLM-invokable tool with metadata (description, parameter schema). No AI framework dependency.
- *AiToolRegistry* — shared singleton registry mapping tags to tool specs. Replaces the duplicated _CamelToolExecutorCache_ in langchain4j-tools and spring-ai-tools.
- *AiToolSpec* — framework-agnostic tool definition holding name, description, JSON Schema parameters, and a reference to the Camel processor that implements the tool.
Each AI component discovers tools from the shared registry via a _tags_ parameter and converts them to its native format (_ChatCompletionFunctionTool_ for openai, _ToolSpecification_ for langchain4j, _ToolCallback_ for spring-ai).
Example YAML DSL:
{code:java}
# Define a tool once (framework-agnostic)
- route:
from:
uri: ai-tools:getFacts
parameters:
tags: research
description: "Get facts about a given topic"
parameter.topic: string
steps:
- to: "openai:chat-completion?model=qwen3-8b&baseUrl=http://localhost:8001/v1"
# Any AI component can use it
- route:
from:
uri: direct:researcher
steps:
- to: "openai:chat-completion?autoToolExecution=true&tags=research"
{code}
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