Gemini API tooling updates: context circulation, tool combos and Maps grounding for Gemini 3

Google has released significant updates to the Gemini API tooling to simplify agentic workflows and reduce orchestration bottlenecks. Developers can now combine built-in tools (like Google Search and Google Maps) with custom functions in a single request, allowing Gemini to seamlessly pivot between public data fetching and custom backend calls, thereby reducing latency. A key feature is cross-tool context circulation, which preserves tool call outputs in the model's context for subsequent steps, enabling complex reasoning across multi-step workflows, such as using weather data to inform a venue booking custom tool. Furthermore, Google has expanded Grounding with Google Maps support to the entire Gemini 3 model family, allowing access to rich, up-to-date spatial and local business data for more accurate, location-aware responses. The updates also introduce unique tool response IDs for better debuggability. For these advanced workflows, Google recommends using the new Interactions API for superior server-side state management and unified reasoning traces.

(Source：Gemini)