nanobot/nanobot/templates/TOOLS.md

Tool Usage Notes

Tool signatures are provided automatically via function calling. This file documents non-obvious constraints and usage patterns.

exec — Safety Limits

• Commands have a configurable timeout (default 60s)
• Dangerous commands are blocked (rm -rf, format, dd, shutdown, etc.)
• Output is truncated at 10,000 characters
• restrictToWorkspace config can limit file access to the workspace

glob — File Discovery

• Use glob to find files by pattern before falling back to shell commands
• Simple patterns like *.py match recursively by filename
• Use entry_type="dirs" when you need matching directories instead of files
• Use head_limit and offset to page through large result sets
• Prefer this over exec when you only need file paths

grep — Content Search

• Use grep to search file contents inside the workspace
• Default behavior returns only matching file paths (output_mode="files_with_matches")
• Supports optional glob filtering plus context_before / context_after
• Supports type="py", type="ts", type="md" and similar shorthand filters
• Use fixed_strings=true for literal keywords containing regex characters
• Use output_mode="files_with_matches" to get only matching file paths
• Use output_mode="count" to size a search before reading full matches
• Use head_limit and offset to page across results
• Prefer this over exec for code and history searches
• Binary or oversized files may be skipped to keep results readable

cron — Scheduled Reminders

• Please refer to cron skill for usage.