Wednesday, September 24, 2025

The 40-tool limit in Tools of AI

Theres a rule of thumb in AI agents where they should only be able to call 40 apis. After that confusion between different systems becomes a problem. Cursor has a hard limit of 40 in its MCP setup for example.

This i think could be a cognitive limit (like Dunbars number). The documentary The Price of Everything describes how Stefan Edlis an art collector only collects 40 artists (and 200 works of art). And how a hedge fund manager says that 40 is the limit on the number of stocks an analyst can follow.

It could be that there is a 40 limit on the number of complex things you can track and possible 200 individual abilities is the limit.


By having parameters,
my life is a lot easier.
- Which parameters?
- Well, 200 works, 40 artists.
-I mentioned that to a very important hedge fund guy about
five, six years ago, he smiled.
He says, "That's interesting.
My analysts can only follow
about 40 stocks."

No comments: