Function calling with user denial

API
1

I’m building a chatbot that uses function calling. Before executing a function, the agent asks the user for confirmation (human-in-the-loop).

It works great if the user confirms. If the user denies the proposed function, should I still keep the function’s message in the message history?

Problem is, if I leave the message there, the model seems to think the function was executed - even if the the following human message is something like no, don’t do that.

Thanks!

2

Welcome to the forum.

For your use case, is there a benefit to retaining message history in that way?
Could you remove the reply or replace it with a placeholder for example and see if that works better?

3

Thanks!

The benefit is if the user modifies the proposed function. We don’t want to lose the information from the rejected proposal. I’ll try with a placeholder and post back here if that works.

4

Update: placeholder strategy works shockingly well.

Instead of appending the rejected assistant message to the message history, I append the following as a user message:

You suggested the following function, but I rejected it: 

<function_json>

Then I append another user message with the user’s rejection text.

This feels a bit janky, but can’t find any issues yet.

1 Like