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Tool Reference

Tools are the capabilities available to the agent during a session. Some tools run silently; others require your approval before they execute, unless a permission rule says otherwise.

File I/O​

Read​

Read text files, images, and PDFs.

Write​

Create or overwrite a file. Requires approval.

Edit​

Make exact string replacements in a file. Requires approval.

Glob​

Find files by glob pattern.

Grep​

Search file contents with regular expressions.

Shell​

Bash​

Execute shell commands. Each call runs in a fresh non-interactive process — shell state does not persist between calls. Long-running commands (servers, watchers, slow builds) can be launched in the background; the agent gets back paths it can read for status and output, and can stop the process by its pid. Requires approval.

Builtin​

Agent​

Spawn a sub-agent to handle a task autonomously. The agent picks which sub-agent to delegate to based on the task.

TodoWrite​

Track progress on multi-step work with a task list.

WebFetch​

Fetch a URL, convert it to markdown, and have a small model extract what's relevant. Requires approval.

WebSearch​

Search the web and return results with citations. Requires approval. Not in the default tool set — enable with --allowed-tools.

Opt-in tools​

These are not enabled by default. Turn them on with --allowed-tools, or use --simple-agent for an agent set tuned around interactive terminal work.

ImageRead​

Read and analyze an image with a natural-language instruction.

PTY​

Drive a persistent shared tmux session — useful for interactive programs and full-screen TUI apps where state needs to carry across calls. Requires tmux.

Browser​

Drive a Chromium browser for navigation, content extraction, and automation. The agent typically takes a snapshot of the page to find interactive elements, then clicks or types into them. Requires approval, and only available when Ante is built with the browser cargo feature.

MCP tools​

Tools provided by configured MCP servers are exposed to the agent as mcp__<server>__<tool>. They appear alongside built-in tools and behave identically from the agent's perspective. MCP tools are registered after --allowed-tools filtering so they are not stripped by a restrictive built-in allowlist.

Default tool set​

By default Ante enables Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, TodoWrite, WebFetch, Edit, Write, and Agent. Browser is also included when Ante is built with the browser feature.

WebSearch, ImageRead, and PTY are opt-in.

Tool filtering​

Control which tools are available in a session:

# Only allow these tools
ante --allowed-tools Read Glob Grep "analyze the code"

# Remove these tools
ante --disallowed-tools Bash Write "read-only analysis"

Supports ToolMatcher syntax for fine-grained control:

# Allow Bash but only for specific patterns
ante --allowed-tools "Read" "Bash(cargo test)" "Bash(cargo clippy)"