> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://dataleap-469bb19d-docs-from-request-2026-08-21-templates.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Programmatic tool calling
> Your agent writes a script that runs tool calls directly from code — instead of calling tools one by one.
Like [sub-agents](/scale/sub-agents-and-intelligence-levels), programmatic tool calling (PTC) is a concept to understand, not something to configure: **Dataleap applies it automatically** when a workflow is repetitive, data-heavy, and deterministic. This page explains what it does — and the one question worth asking.
**The one thing you can do:** ask your agent, right in its chat — *"Would PTC make sense here?"* or *"Do you use PTC?"* It checks its own workflow, tells you honestly whether code would help, and restructures itself if it does. Worth asking whenever an agent feels slow or expensive on a repetitive job.
## What it does
Without PTC, the model sits in the loop for every single tool call. With PTC, it writes one script that batches the calls — and only the clean summary ever touches the context:
On deterministic workflows, PTC is tremendously cheaper — typically **30–80% fewer credits**, and much faster. Combined with the [model tier strategy](/scale/sub-agents-and-intelligence-levels#model-tiers), repetitive workflows cost a fraction of their naive version.
## Where it helps — and where it doesn't
| ✅ PTC pays off | ❌ Plain tool use is better |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| Repetitive, deterministic work — the same call over hundreds of rows | One-off calls, or a couple of steps that need reasoning |
| Data-heavy loops where only the summary matters | Judgment-heavy flows — deciding based on what it finds |
| Multi-step pipelines: fetch → transform → write | Highly variable flows where the path changes every run |
That's also why Dataleap doesn't use PTC everywhere: code is rigid. It's fast and cheap on a fixed path, but a workflow that needs flexibility is better off reasoning step by step — and Dataleap makes that call for you.
See programmatic tool calling in action.
Next chapter: bring your team along.
All the cost levers in one place.