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The file tools give the agent access to the local filesystem. All paths are resolved relative to the workspace root unless absolute paths are provided.

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Setup

File tools require ALLOW_LOCAL_TOOLS=true. They are disabled by default to prevent accidental filesystem access in hosted or shared environments. 
export ALLOW_LOCAL_TOOLS=true

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Available Actions

  • read_file: Read the contents of a file.
  • write_file: Write content to a file, creating parent directories as needed.
  • list_dir: List the contents of a directory.
  • apply_patch: Apply a unified diff patch to a file. This is the preferred way for the agent to make targeted edits to existing files rather than rewriting them in full.

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Example Usage

“Read my project notes at projects/ironclaw/notes.md”
“Write a README for my project to projects/ironclaw/README.md”
“What files are in my projects/ directory?”
“Update the status section in projects/notes.md to say Completed”

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Security Considerations

Relative paths like notes/todo.md resolve to <workspace>/notes/todo.md. Absolute paths are used as-is.
The sanitizer detects path traversal patterns (../) in file paths supplied by external content. Paths that resolve outside the workspace root are blocked by policy.
read_file passes file contents through the Safety Layer. If a file contains patterns that look like API keys, tokens, or private keys, the leak detector will redact them before the LLM sees them.
File paths are not passed through a shell. Characters like ;, &, and $() in paths are treated as literals and cannot be used for command injection.