diff --git a/endpoints/OAI/types/chat_completion.py b/endpoints/OAI/types/chat_completion.py
index 561d9bc..405a609 100644
--- a/endpoints/OAI/types/chat_completion.py
+++ b/endpoints/OAI/types/chat_completion.py
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ class ChatCompletionStreamChoice(BaseModel):
 
 # Inherited from common request
 class ChatCompletionRequest(CommonCompletionRequest):
-    messages: List[ChatCompletionMessage] = Field(default_factory=list)
+    messages: List[ChatCompletionMessage]
     prompt_template: Optional[str] = None
     add_generation_prompt: Optional[bool] = True
     template_vars: Optional[dict] = Field(
diff --git a/endpoints/OAI/utils/chat_completion.py b/endpoints/OAI/utils/chat_completion.py
index f9a556f..bfed45a 100644
--- a/endpoints/OAI/utils/chat_completion.py
+++ b/endpoints/OAI/utils/chat_completion.py
@@ -207,12 +207,11 @@ async def _append_template_metadata(data: ChatCompletionRequest, template_vars:
     if isinstance(data.stop, str):
         data.stop = [data.stop] + template_metadata.stop_strings
     else:
-        data.stop += template_metadata.stop_strings
+        data.stop.extend(template_metadata.stop_strings)
 
     # Tool call start strings
     if template_metadata.tool_starts:
-        if data.tool_call_start is None:
-            data.tool_call_start = template_metadata.tool_starts
+        data.tool_call_start.extend(template_metadata.tool_starts)
 
         # Append to stop strings to halt for a tool call generation
         data.stop.extend(template_metadata.tool_starts)
@@ -245,10 +244,6 @@ async def format_messages_with_template(
         if message.tool_calls:
             message.tool_calls_json = ToolCallProcessor.to_json(message.tool_calls)
 
-            # The tools variable is inspectable in the template, so
-            # store the list of dicts rather than the ToolCallProcessor object.
-            message.tool_calls = ToolCallProcessor.dump(message.tool_calls)
-
         message_dicts.append(message.model_dump(exclude_none=True))
 
     # Get all special tokens