Small compatibility helpers for OpenAI-compatible providers that emit tool calls as XML-like text in message.content instead of structured OpenAI message.tool_calls.

This was extracted from the TAU3 / Tinker Qwen3.6 evaluation debugging. The core problem was:

• Tinker/Qwen sometimes returns:

  {
    "role": "assistant",
    "content": "<think>...</think>\n<tool_call><function=get_order_details><parameter=order_id>#W123</parameter></function></tool_call>",
    "tool_calls": null
  }

• Most OpenAI-style agent frameworks expect:

  {
    "role": "assistant",
    "content": null,
    "tool_calls": [
      {
        "id": "call_xxx",
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
          "name": "get_order_details",
          "arguments": "{\"order_id\":\"#W123\"}"
        }
      }
    ]
  }

This package does two things:

1. Convert inbound Tinker XML-like tool calls to OpenAI-style tool_calls.
2. Convert outbound OpenAI tool-call history and tool results into plain assistant text for providers that reject role=tool history.

from tinker2openai_tool import (
    normalize_tinker_assistant_message,
    to_tinker_compatible_messages,
)

raw_message = {
    "role": "assistant",
    "content": """
<think>Need order details.</think>
<tool_call>
<function=get_order_details>
<parameter=order_id>
"#W123"
</parameter>
</function>
</tool_call>
""",
    "tool_calls": None,
}

normalized = normalize_tinker_assistant_message(
    raw_message,
    allowed_tool_names={"get_order_details"},
)
print(normalized["tool_calls"][0]["function"]["name"])

For the next provider call:

messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Return order #W123"},
    normalized,
    {
        "role": "tool",
        "tool_call_id": normalized["tool_calls"][0]["id"],
        "content": "{\"status\":\"delivered\"}",
    },
]

safe_for_tinker = to_tinker_compatible_messages(messages)

safe_for_tinker will not contain OpenAI role=tool messages or assistant tool_calls history. Instead, those are represented as assistant text:

Tool call: get_order_details
Arguments: {"order_id":"#W123"}

Tool result:
{"status":"delivered"}

• Always pass allowed_tool_names if you can. It prevents hallucinated tool names from being converted into executable calls.
• This is a compatibility shim, not a model-quality fix. If the model emits pure planning text with no XML-like tool call, this code will not invent one.
• The implementation is dependency-free Python 3.10+.