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    "story_id": "mp-2026-10-12-004",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-rated-tool-reliability-retrieval",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-10-12-morning-0094",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-10-12",
    "position": 4,
    "story_type": "dispatch",
    "section": "developer-tools",
    "editorial_classification": "editorial",
    "headline": "The Right Tool Also Had to Be Working",
    "slug": "the-right-tool-also-had-to-be-working",
    "dek": "RATED combines semantic matching with feedback about whether an agent’s tools actually execute.",
    "summary": "RATED combines semantic matching with feedback about whether an agent’s tools actually execute.",
    "body_text": "Tool retrieval often asks which API matches a request while ignoring whether that API is available. RATED adds a small contextual-bandit reranker that learns from execution feedback without retraining the main retriever. Its EcoAgent benchmark includes 5,172 tools and more than 210,000 query-tool pairs. In the authors’ severe-outage evaluation, fault selection fell from 86.2% to 2.9%; they report less than one millisecond of added latency over encode-only inference. These are benchmark results under specified outage conditions, but they make operational availability part of the selection problem.",
    "why_it_matters": "RATED combines semantic matching with feedback about whether an agent’s tools actually execute.",
    "limitations": [
      "In the authors’ severe-outage evaluation, fault selection fell from 86.2% to 2.9%; they report less than one millisecond of added latency over encode-only inference."
    ],
    "importance": 8,
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    "json_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-10-12-004.json",
    "first_published_at": "2026-10-12T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-10-12T09:48:10.481-04:00",
    "content_status": "updated",
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        "text": "RATED combines semantic matching with feedback about whether an agent’s tools actually execute.",
        "source_ids": [
          "source-2026-10-12-004"
        ],
        "qualification": "In the authors’ severe-outage evaluation, fault selection fell from 86.2% to 2.9%; they report less than one millisecond of added latency over encode-only inference."
      }
    ],
    "source_ids": [
      "source-2026-10-12-004"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "tool-retrieval",
      "reliability",
      "agents",
      "preprint"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": [
      {
        "correction_id": "correction-2026-10-12-001",
        "revision": 2,
        "summary": "Publication note: The October 12, 2026 edition was prepared and published late on October 12 after the scheduled newsroom task could not start. The edition retains its October 12 date and 9:00 AM America/Detroit reveal time. Reports use sources available before that cutoff; actual preparation and image-generation times are preserved in the provenance records.",
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-10-12-004",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2610.13889, original v1",
      "publisher": "arXiv / submitting research authors",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13889v1",
      "canonical_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13889v1",
      "source_type": "primary_research",
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      "published_at": "2026-10-09T13:38:11.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-10-12T09:32:36.246-04:00",
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  "corrections": [
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      "correction_id": "correction-2026-10-12-001",
      "revision": 2,
      "summary": "Publication note: The October 12, 2026 edition was prepared and published late on October 12 after the scheduled newsroom task could not start. The edition retains its October 12 date and 9:00 AM America/Detroit reveal time. Reports use sources available before that cutoff; actual preparation and image-generation times are preserved in the provenance records.",
      "published_at": "2026-10-12T09:48:10.481-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
  },
  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "The Right Tool Also Had to Be Working",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-10-12T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-10-12-004/the-right-tool-also-had-to-be-working"
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