@misc{lou2026the,
author = {Lou, Renze and Peng, Baolin and Yao, Wenlin and Wu, Qianhui and Cheng, Hao and Nath, Suman and Yin, Wenpeng and Gao, Jianfeng},
title = {The Tool Illusion: Rethinking Tool Use in Web Agents},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = {April},
abstract = {As web agents rapidly evolve, an increasing body of work has moved beyond conventional atomic browser interactions and explored tool use as a higher-level action paradigm. Although prior studies have shown the promise of tools, their conclusions are often drawn from limited experimental scales and sometimes non-comparable settings. As a result, several fundamental questions remain unclear: i) whether tools provide consistent gains for web agents, ii) what practical design principles characterize effective tools, and iii) what side effects tool use may introduce. To establish a stronger empirical foundation for future research, we revisit tool use in web agents through an extensive and carefully controlled study across diverse tool sources, backbone models, tool-use frameworks, and evaluation benchmarks. Our findings both revise some prior conclusions and complement others with broader evidence. We hope this study provides a more reliable empirical basis and inspires future research on tool-use web agents.},
url = {http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/research/publication/the-tool-illusion-rethinking-tool-use-in-web-agents/},
}