Entity Binding Failures in Tool-Augmented Agents

Abstract

Tool-augmented language-model agents are often evaluated by whether they select the correct tool, produce valid API arguments, and complete the requested task. However, an agent may choose the right tool and still act on the wrong external entity. For example, a request to "email Alex about the launch" may lead the agent to contact the wrong Alex, attach the wrong launch document, reply in the wrong thread, or update the wrong customer account. We call these errors entity binding failures. This paper studies entity binding failures as a distinct reliability and safety problem in tool-augmented agents. We formalize the separation between tool correctness and entity correctness, introduce a taxonomy of wrong-entity failures in enterprise workflows, and evaluate entity-aware execution mechanisms including entity-resolution preconditions, confidence-gated binding, clarification under ambiguity, and provenance tracking. In a controlled diagnostic evaluation across 60 tasks, five model backends, and six tool-use methods, all methods achieved 0.0 percent wrong-tool error, yet action-oriented baselines still produced wrong-entity actions in 24.0-26.0 percent of runs. Entity-aware methods eliminated wrong-entity actions and risk-weighted wrong-entity exposure in this setting, but reduced direct task completion by deferring under ambiguity. These findings show that safe tool use requires not only selecting the correct tool, but also reliably binding natural-language references to the correct real-world entity before action.