Gemma 4 26B fumbles tool calling namespaces

Tool calling reliability remains a major pain point for open-weights models, and Gemma 4's formatting quirks highlight the need for standardized function calling schemas.

• –The model tends to hallucinate namespaces like "notify:notify" instead of strictly following the provided schema
• –This forces developers to write custom parsing logic or middleware to strip prefixes, complicating agent orchestration
• –Competing models like Qwen 3.5 handle identical prompts correctly out of the box, emphasizing the gap in instruction following
• –Developers may need aggressive system prompt tuning to enforce strict adherence to function names with Gemma 4