Available in arize-phoenix 15.4.0+
Phoenix Playground and the Prompts library now support provider tools — built-in, vendor-hosted capabilities like web search, code execution, computer use, and grounding. Paste any provider’s tool JSON into the Playground and Phoenix stores and round-trips it verbatim, so your prompt runs against the underlying provider exactly as defined.
Provider tools sit alongside Phoenix’s existing portable function tools: function tools stay normalized and provider-agnostic; provider tools preserve provider-specific JSON for capabilities only that vendor offers.
What Phoenix forwards#
Phoenix doesn’t maintain a hardcoded list of supported provider tools — anything the underlying provider SDK accepts is round-tripped as-is. Examples that have been verified end-to-end against the playground:
| Provider | Examples verified in Phoenix |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | web_search, code_execution, computer_use |
| OpenAI Responses API | web_search, file_search, code_interpreter, computer_use_preview, tool_search |
| Google Gemini | google_search grounding |
| Amazon Bedrock | provider-specific tool blocks are forwarded verbatim |
If a provider ships a new built-in tool, it works in Phoenix immediately — no library update required. Mismatches surface as errors from the provider SDK at request time.
Using provider tools#
In the Playground — open the tool editor, switch to JSON mode, and paste the provider’s tool definition. Phoenix detects the shape automatically: function-tool shapes are stored as function tools; everything else is stored as a provider tool.
“Open in Playground” on a captured trace — replays the exact tool payload that hit the model, including any provider tools that were active.
Mix with function tools — function tools and provider tools coexist on the same prompt version. Switching the provider or API type drops attached provider tools (since the JSON is provider-specific), while function tools survive provider changes.
SDK prompt export#
Both the Python and TypeScript clients preserve provider tools when exporting prompts: