Read

A built-in definition supplied to the request when the tools option was omitted.

Captured description

Reads a file from the local filesystem.

  • file_path must be an absolute path.
  • Reads up to 2000 lines by default.
  • When you already know which part of the file you need, only read that part. This can be important for larger files.
  • Results are returned using cat -n format, with line numbers starting at 1
  • Reads images (PNG, JPG, …) and presents them visually. Reads PDFs via the pages parameter (e.g. “1-5”, max 20 pages/request; required for PDFs over 10 pages). Reads Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb) as cells with outputs.
  • Reading a directory, a missing file, or an empty file returns an error or system reminder rather than content.
  • Do NOT re-read a file you just edited to verify — Edit/Write would have errored if the change failed, and the harness tracks file state for you.

Input schema

JSON 
{
  "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "file_path": {
      "description": "The absolute path to the file to read",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "offset": {
      "description": "The line number to start reading from. Only provide if the file is too large to read at once",
      "type": "integer",
      "minimum": 0,
      "maximum": 9007199254740991
    },
    "limit": {
      "description": "The number of lines to read. Only provide if the file is too large to read at once.",
      "type": "integer",
      "exclusiveMinimum": 0,
      "maximum": 9007199254740991
    },
    "pages": {
      "description": "Page range for PDF files (e.g., \"1-5\", \"3\", \"10-20\"). Only applicable to PDF files. Maximum 20 pages per request.",
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "file_path"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Independent estimate

~587 tokens

The captured tool object was counted against the common baseline. This value supports comparison and is not additive.