Tool calling in reasoning models

[idling-mind]

Saw a demo video from Qwen3's release blog post. https://qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwen3/#key-features where they demonstrates the tool calling capability of the model where it calls the tools during the thinking process.

I could not get open-webui do something similar with qwen3. What I have noticed is that the tool call happens even before thinking starts. I changed the function calling chat control to native and then it stopped working completely (no thinking, no tool call, even though the status message looked promising).

Is this a missing feature or something that I am messing up?

[Tyrannius]

Saw this thread and wanted to answer on it for anyone else to see.
It is called interleaved thinking and depending on the framework you use. Not the frontend.

https://docs.vllm.ai/en/latest/features/interleaved_thinking/#example-usage

[Classic298]

@Tyrannius you need to enable native tool calling in open webui then it will do interleaved thinking

[Tyrannius]

Thats not really exactly the same from what I saw.
also - With native tool calling reasoning on certain models is greatly reduced. i.e. Qwen3.5 . I will open another issue on that but that doesnt concern this topic.