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SmolLM3-3B

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Hugging Face Smol Models Research 3.08k

Hi

I am reading this
https://huggingface.co/learn/smol-course/unit1/2#chat-templates-with-tools

I feel like there is a bug in HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B 's chat template

from the example

# Conversation with tool usage
messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant with access to tools."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather like in Paris?"},
    {
        "role": "assistant", 
        "content": "I'll check the weather in Paris for you.",
        "tool_calls": [
            {
                "id": "call_1",
                "type": "function",
                "function": {
                    "name": "get_weather",
                    "arguments": '{"location": "Paris, France", "unit": "celsius"}'
                }
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "role": "tool",
        "tool_call_id": "call_1", 
        "content": '{"temperature": 22, "condition": "sunny", "humidity": 60}'
    },
    {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "The weather in Paris is currently sunny with a temperature of 22°C and 60% humidity. It's a beautiful day!"
    }
]

# Apply chat template with tools
formatted_with_tools = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
    messages,
    tools=tools,
    tokenize=False,
    add_generation_prompt=False
)

print("Chat template with tools:")
print(formatted_with_tools)

I got this result

Chat template with tools:
<|im_start|>system
## Metadata

Knowledge Cutoff Date: June 2025
Today Date: 27 September 2025
Reasoning Mode: /think

## Custom Instructions

You are a helpful assistant with access to tools.

### Tools

You may call one or more functions to assist with the user query.
You are provided with function signatures within <tools></tools> XML tags:

<tools>
{'type': 'function', 'function': {'name': 'get_weather', 'description': 'Get the current weather for a location', 'parameters': {'type': 'object', 'properties': {'location': {'type': 'string', 'description': 'The city and state, e.g. San Francisco, CA'}, 'unit': {'type': 'string', 'enum': ['celsius', 'fahrenheit'], 'description': 'The temperature unit'}}, 'required': ['location']}}}
{'type': 'function', 'function': {'name': 'calculate', 'description': 'Perform mathematical calculations', 'parameters': {'type': 'object', 'properties': {'expression': {'type': 'string', 'description': 'Mathematical expression to evaluate'}}, 'required': ['expression']}}}
</tools>

For each function call, return a json object with function name and arguments within <tool_call></tool_call> XML tags:
<tool_call>
{"name": <function-name>, "arguments": <args-json-object>}
</tool_call>

<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
What's the weather like in Paris?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
I'll check the weather in Paris for you.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
{"temperature": 22, "condition": "sunny", "humidity": 60}<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The weather in Paris is currently sunny with a temperature of 22°C and 60% humidity. It's a beautiful day!<|im_end|>

Which is kind of weird.
The first thing is there is no tool call in below message

<|im_start|>assistant
I'll check the weather in Paris for you.<|im_end|>

I expect it to have <tool_call> ... </tool_call> in it.

the second thing is why the tool role got replace with user role.
Should not we explicitly specify the role?

Can someone help me with this, please?