File Read Tool - Let AI Read Your Files
Reads the contents of any file on your Mac and makes it available to the AI model. Supports text files, code files, configuration files, CSVs, JSON, XML, logs, PDFs (page-by-page with offset and limit), and any other text-based format. The AI can then analyze, summarize, search, transform, or answer questions about the file content.
What It Does
Reads the contents of any file on your Mac and makes it available to the AI model. Supports text files, code files, configuration files, CSVs, JSON, XML, logs, PDFs (page-by-page with offset and limit), and any other text-based format. The AI can then analyze, summarize, search, transform, or answer questions about the file content.
Why It Matters
Without file read access, you have to manually copy file contents and paste them into the AI chat - which is tedious for large files. Chapeta's File Read tool lets the AI directly access your files, including PDFs with page-by-page navigation, making it practical to analyze entire codebases, review long documents, or process data files.
Example Prompts
Read my package.json and tell me which dependencies are outdated Analyze the Nginx config at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and suggest performance improvements Read all the Python files in ~/project/src and summarize what each module does Parse this CSV file and tell me the average, min, and max of the 'revenue' column Read my .env file and check if any required variables are missing compared to .env.example Summarize the key points from ~/Documents/meeting-notes.txt Example Output
Read: package.json (2.4KB) Your project has 12 dependencies. Here are the ones with major version updates available: - react: 18.2.0 → 19.1.0 (major) - typescript: 5.2.0 → 5.8.0 (minor) - eslint: 8.45.0 → 9.6.0 (major) Want me to update the versions in package.json?
Safety & Control
File read operations require your approval. The AI shows you which file path it wants to read before accessing it. File contents are sent to the selected AI model's API for processing - be mindful of sensitive files. You can configure allowed directories to restrict which parts of your file system the AI can access.
vs Other AI Apps
ChatGPT and Claude allow file uploads through their web interfaces, but they can't access files already on your disk. You have to manually find, select, and upload each file. Chapeta's File Read tool lets the AI access any file by path - no drag-and-drop, no upload limits, no copying. It can even read multiple files in sequence to understand a whole project.
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