I tried to make my AI agents lazier with a 270M model. It backfired on the smartest one.

Description and use

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week3-2026-10-19">Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady</a></em></p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>My AI agent kept calling tools it didn't need.</p> <p>I gave gpt-oss-120b 161 tasks it can reliably answer on its own, no tools. It still reached for a tool on 69 of them. A small 4B model running locally did the same on 36 of 68. Every one of those is an extra round trip, more tokens and more waiting.</p> <p>This week's theme is making AI do less. So I tried to make my agents lazier, in the

Problem

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week3-2026-10-19">Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady</a></em></p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>My AI agent kept calling tools it didn't need.</p> <p>I gave gpt-oss-120b 161 tasks it can reliably answer on its own, no tools. It still reached for a tool on 69 of them. A small 4B model running locally did the same on 36 of 68. Every one of those is an extra round trip, more tokens and more waiting.</p> <p>This week's theme is making AI do less. So I tried to make my agents lazier, in the

Outcome

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week3-2026-10-19">Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady</a></em></p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>My AI agent kept calling tools it didn't need.</p> <p>I gave gpt-oss-120b 161 tasks it can reliably answer on its own, no tools. It still reached for a tool on 69 of them. A small 4B model running locally did the same on 36 of 68. Every one of those is an extra round trip, more tokens and more waiting.</p> <p>This week's theme is making AI do less. So I tried to make my agents lazier, in the

Evidence

I tried to make my AI agents lazier with a 270M model. It backfired on the smartest one.

Source