The small, nimble knife for peeling, coring, and detailed work done in the hand rather than on the board. The spear-point profile, with its symmetric centered tip, is the universal option and the one most cooks reach for. Other profiles trade away versatility for a single job: the sheep's foot has a straight edge and a blunt squared-off tip for controlled downward cuts, while the bird's beak (also called the tournée) has a strongly curved, inward-pointing edge made for carving the football-shaped tournée cut, a specialty tool covered separately as the tournée knife.
Primary tasks: in-hand peeling of citrus, apples, and potatoes; small precision board work; trimming, coring, and scoring small items where a chef's knife is too large to control.
Ideal steel: a mid-hardness stainless where control matters more than long edge retention, such as 14C28N, AEB-L, or Nitro-V. These take a keen edge, resist rust through casual hand use, and are easy to bring back when they dull; see the care guide for sharpening cadence.
Limitations: any task requiring blade length or leverage. Even so, every cook who peels their own produce needs one.