Best practice for describing function enum choices

API
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1

What are some best practices for describing to the Assistant the different choices in an enum, so that it can determine which value the user wants without having to make a literal match?

For example, I have a function, and the parameter choices are custom terms that are specific to some use case.

{
	"name": "load_box",
	"description": "Load the box with a special thing.",
	"parameters": {
		"type": "object",
		"required": [ "thing" ],
		"properties": {
			"thing": {
				"type": "string",
				"description": "The special thing to load into the box",
				"enum": [
					"foozle",
					"bartingus",
					"gherp",
					"krenket"
				]
			}
		}
	}
}

Now I want to empower the Assistant to make choices based on descriptions of those terms. I don’t see support in the JSON schema for describing them. I tried file_search, uploading this text file:

This document describes special things that can be loaded in a box.  
•	A foozle is a round red squishy thing.
•	A bartingus is a square green squishy thing.
•	A gherp is a round blue hard thing.
•	A krenket is a square yellow hard vegetable.

It didn’t really work. For example, “load the box with a blue thing” would result in it picking one of the choices arbitrarily then attaching the adjective - e.g. “I loaded the box with a blue foozle”.

In one test, I asked it a question that triggered retrieval, and once the choice descriptions were in the chat history, it started working. That suggests that one workaround would be to add a hidden message to the history with the descriptions, but that doesn’t seem practical since it would fall out of the context window.

One time I was it actually do retrieval first, then it ran the function call, which makes me thing that describing things through retrieval perhaps isn’t the best approach.

2

The way that a description of a property is presented to the AI is like:

// The special thing to load into the box
thing:str "fougasse" | "maritozzo" | "paratha" | "lepeshka" | "rugbrød"

Therefore you could place a better description:

"description": "Possible items for bread box, use the one that best fulfills the user needs, one of:\n{\"fougasse\":\"A French flatbread often shaped like a leaf and filled with herbs, olives, or cheese.\",\"maritozzo\":\"A Roman sweet bun filled with whipped cream.\",\"paratha\":\"An Indian flatbread made with whole wheat flour, often layered or stuffed.\",\"lepeshka\":\"A round, flat Central Asian bread, typically baked in a tandoor.\",\"rugbrød\":\"A dense Danish rye bread made with whole grains and seeds.\"}"

The function is the place to describe the function. The names also should be instructive.

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3

I tried this and it worked perfectly. It’s good to know that the descriptions can be quite detailed. Thank you.

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