ReAct and Tool Usage (The Agents Season, Episode 2)

Before 2022, there was a wall between AI and the real world — models could reason impressively, but couldn't look anything up, run code, or check whether anything they said was actually true. This episode traces the moment that wall came down, through two landmark papers: ReAct, which showed what happens when you interleave reasoning and action in a loop, and Toolformer, which taught models to decide *for themselves* when to reach for a tool. Plus: what MCP actually is, and why a hobbyist project called Open Claw became the fastest-growing open source project in history. --- Website: https://lineardigressions.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/linear-digressions/id941219323 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1JdkD0ZoZ52KjwdR0b1WoT Substack: https://substack.com/@lineardigressions