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Add tool calling to LlamaLanguageModel, including streaming - #216

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james-333i wants to merge 7 commits into
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james-333i:feat/llama-tool-calling
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Add tool calling to LlamaLanguageModel, including streaming#216
james-333i wants to merge 7 commits into
huggingface:mainfrom
james-333i:feat/llama-tool-calling

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llama_chat_apply_template has no parameter for tool definitions, so tool support is implemented at the prompt layer with the syntax detected from the model's embedded template: Hermes-style JSON, Qwen XML, and the Gemma 4 canonical format. Calls run through the same resolve-and-continue loop as the MLX and Ollama backends. Streaming runs the full loop and withholds partial call markup until the next token confirms or breaks it. This includes the commit from #181, whose Snapshot.transcriptEntries field the streaming path requires, so #181 should merge first. Stacks on the session-context PR.

james-333i and others added 7 commits September 2, 2026 08:53
streamResponse consumed an inner AsyncThrowingStream whose builder ran
the entire generation loop synchronously on the consuming task, so
every snapshot buffered and arrived in one burst after generation
finished.

Yield snapshots directly from the generation loop on the streaming
task, and check for task cancellation between tokens so an abandoned
stream stops decoding promptly.
Image segments threw unsupportedFeature because the backend had no
multimodal path, even though the prebuilt llama.cpp binaries ship the
mtmd library and its helpers.

Accept an mmprojPath at initialization and load the projector next to
the model. When a projector is present, prompt formatting replaces
each image segment with the mtmd media marker and collects payloads in
order, then generation tokenizes the marker-annotated prompt with
mtmd_tokenize and evaluates text and image chunks through
mtmd_helper_eval_chunks before sampling continues from the resulting
position. Both respond and streaming support images, and models
without a projector keep rejecting image input.

Adds live tests generating from an embedded test image through both
paths.
Gemma 4's canonical chat template no longer contains the
start_of_turn marker that llama_chat_apply_template keys its Gemma
detection on, so formatting threw encodingFailed for every Gemma 4
GGUF.

When template application fails and the embedded template carries the
Gemma 4 turn syntax, render it directly: turns open with a turn
marker and role, close with the reverse marker, the assistant role is
named model, and generation opens a model turn. The BOS token is
applied during tokenization, and thinking is opt-in in this format so
no suppression is needed.
Every generation created a fresh llama_context and prefilled the full
rendered conversation from token zero, so multi-turn chat cost grew
with the square of the transcript and long conversations spent most of
their time re-decoding history.

Keep one context alive per session for plain chat generations. Each
exchange tokenizes the rendered prompt, keeps the longest token prefix
shared with the context's recorded state, removes diverged state with
llama_memory_seq_rm, and decodes only the remainder. Backends that
cannot rewind, such as recurrent models, fall back to clearing memory
and decoding the full prompt, and appends need no rewind on any
backend. The final prompt token is always re-decoded so sampling has
fresh logits, generated tokens extend the recorded state as they
decode, and any generation error discards the cached context.

Structured generation, image prompts, and encoder models keep
single-use contexts, and clearCachedContext lets consumers free the
cached state under memory pressure.

Adds a live test asserting prefix reuse on the second turn of a
session.
llama_chat_apply_template has no parameter for tool definitions, so tool
support is implemented at the prompt layer. The tool syntax is detected
from the model's embedded chat template: Hermes-style JSON (Qwen 2.5/3
and most ChatML fine-tunes), Qwen 3.5's XML function/parameter form, and
the Gemma 4 canonical format with its token-quoted argument notation.

Definitions are rendered into the system prompt following each
template's own wording and placement, past tool turns are replayed in
the native markup (including Gemma 4's open-model-turn continuation),
and calls are parsed back out of generated text and run through the
resolve-and-continue loop used by the MLX and Ollama backends, with the
same delegate hooks, iteration cap, and repeated-signature guard.
Generation stops early once a complete tool-call block is produced.

Non-streaming respond() only; streamResponse() ignores session tools as
before.
streamResponse() hardcoded tools: nil and discarded .toolCall stream
items, so MLX callers had to choose between streamed tokens and tool
calling. respond() already ran the full tool cycle; this ports that
while-loop into the streaming path, reusing mlxToolSpecs, resolveToolCalls,
makeTranscriptToolCalls, and the maxToolIterations / repeated-signature
guards. Text and tool entries accumulate across rounds so snapshots stay
monotonic.

Also surface streamed tool activity: ResponseStream.Snapshot gains a
defaulted transcriptEntries field (ArraySlice<Transcript.Entry>), wrapStream
appends it to the session transcript before the response entry, and
collect() returns it instead of []. The field defaults to empty, so the
other providers keep their current behavior; the shared plumbing is ready
for them to populate later.

Closes huggingface#164

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
streamResponse() now runs the same resolve-and-continue loop as
respond(), yielding snapshots that carry the cumulative visible text and
the tool-call and tool-output entries produced so far. Because llama
tool calls arrive as text rather than parsed events, snapshots withhold
any trailing partial match of a call-start marker until the next token
confirms or breaks it, so markup never appears mid-stream.

Gemma 4 emits thought-channel spans without being asked: thinking is
opt-in via a system-turn token this backend never injects, and the
canonical template ships a strip_thinking macro for consumers. Both
respond() and streamResponse() now remove completed spans and withhold
unclosed ones, recognizing the canonical marker spelling and the variant
observed from deployed quantizations.
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2 participants