Prompt-Based vs. Native Tool-Calling: Navigating the Local LLM Implementation Minefield

If you’ve spent any time working across different local LLM backends, you know the frustration. You get your tool-calling logic dialed in perfectly for Ollama, you feel great, and then you try to switch your backend to something like MLX or a specific llama.cpp setup, and suddenly everything falls apart. The truth is, local tool-calling is fundamentally broken across the ecosystem. It’s not just a matter of "model performance"—it’s a massive fragmentation issue. Some backends offer native tool...