Tools Reference
LongerAgent comes with 16 built-in tools and 8 orchestration tools. Additional tools can be added through the Skills system and MCP integration.
Built-in Tools (16)
These tools are available to the agent in every session.
File Operations
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
read_file | Read a file's contents. Supports text files and images (PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP) on multimodal models -- the agent can directly see and analyze images. |
write_file | Write content to a file, creating it if it does not exist. |
edit_file | Edit a file with targeted find-and-replace operations. |
apply_patch | Apply a unified diff patch to one or more files. |
list_dir | List the contents of a directory. |
glob | Find files matching a glob pattern (e.g., **/*.ts). |
grep | Search file contents with regular expressions. |
diff | Show the diff between two files or a file and a string. |
Shell
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
bash | Run a shell command and return its output. Has a 10-minute hard timeout and 200KB output cap per stream. |
bash_background | Run a shell command in the background. Useful for starting dev servers or long-running processes. |
bash_output | Read output from a background shell process. |
kill_shell | Kill a running background shell process. |
Testing
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
test | Run the project's test suite or a specific test file. |
time | Return the current local time, timezone, and UTC offset. |
Web
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
web_search | Search the web. Uses the provider's native web search when available (OpenAI, Kimi, GLM), or falls back to a web search tool. |
web_fetch | Fetch and read the content of a URL. |
Orchestration Tools (8)
These tools manage sub-agents, context, and user interaction.
Sub-Agent Management
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
spawn_agent | Spawn sub-agents from a YAML call file. See Sub-Agents. |
kill_agent | Kill one or more running sub-agents by ID. |
check_status | Check the status of running sub-agents. |
wait | Wait for specific sub-agents to complete. |
Context Management
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
show_context | Inspect the current context distribution -- how much space each segment uses. The agent uses this to decide what to summarize. |
summarize_context | Surgically compress selected context segments while preserving key decisions. |
User Interaction
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
ask | Ask the user 1-4 structured questions with 1-4 options each. Used when the agent needs a decision before proceeding. |
plan | Manage an execution plan with tracked checkpoints. |
Skills Tool
When skills are enabled, a dynamic skill tool becomes available. This tool dispatches to the active skill's instructions. Manage skills with the /skills command or by asking the agent to install new ones.
The built-in skill-manager skill enables the agent to autonomously search for, download, and install new skills.
See Skills for details.
MCP Tools
MCP servers can provide any number of additional tools. These are configured in ~/.longeragent/mcp.json and appear alongside the built-in tools automatically.
See MCP Integration for details.
Tool Safety
LongerAgent does not sandbox tool execution. The bash tool runs shell commands directly, and file tools write to disk without confirmation. This is by design for productivity, but it means you should:
- Run LongerAgent in trusted environments.
- Review what the agent does, especially for destructive operations.
- Use the
explorersub-agent template for read-only investigation tasks.