customer_list

Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?

With no annotations supplied, the description carries the full behavioral burden. It does disclose two real traits — cursor pagination and newest-first ordering — but says nothing about what fields a customer record contains, whether listing exposes sensitive billing data, or whether results can be filtered by email/name.

Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.

Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?

The first line is well front-loaded and economical. The second paragraph is about customer optionality in document rendering rather than about listing, so for this specific tool it is largely tangential and displaces content the agent actually needs.

Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.

Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?

For a simple two-parameter, read-only list with no output schema and no annotations, the definition covers identity and pagination adequately. It falls short on return contents and filtering, which is the information an agent would need to decide whether this or customer_get answers its question.

Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.

Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?

Schema description coverage is 0% for two parameters, so the description must compensate. "Cursor-paginated" explains the pagination model behind limit/cursor, but it never explains how to obtain or reuse a cursor, how limit interacts with paging, or that ordering is fixed at newest-first (so no sort parameter exists).

Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.

Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?

"The people and companies you bill, newest first" plus "Cursor-paginated" identifies the resource (customers) and the listing behavior, which separates it from customer_get/customer_create/customer_update siblings by implication. It never uses an explicit verb like "list", so the agent must infer the retrieval action, but the inference is easy and correct.

Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.

Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?

The description gives no when-to-use or when-not-to-use guidance for this tool versus customer_get or business_profile_list. The second paragraph ("A customer is optional — the stateless render endpoints take a buyer inline — but storing one lets a document reference it by id") is guidance about whether to persist a customer at all, which belongs to customer_create rather than to listing them.

Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.