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Tools

janito includes built-in tools for common tasks.

Available Tools

Category Tools Description
Files File operations List, read, write, search files and directories
Code Search Code search Search a pre-built trigram index (codesearch plugin, /codesearch)
System Execution Run Python code, execute PowerShell commands
Net Web access Fetch URLs, search the web (Brave)
Interactive AskUser Ask the user a question mid-turn (web UI and interactive shell only — see below)
Skills Extensions Install and use task-specific skills
MCP Extensions Connect to MCP servers for custom tools

Interactive Tools

AskUser lets the agent ask you a question mid-turn and use your answer. It is only loaded in interactive runs, where someone can actually answer:

  • Web UI (janito --web): the question appears as an inline card in the chat, even when the server itself runs headless (no TTY stdin).
  • Interactive shell (no prompt argument, TTY stdin): the question is rendered in the console and the answer is read from stdin.

In single-prompt runs — janito "..." (positional or piped) — nobody is watching mid-run, so AskUser is skipped: it is never advertised to the model and the agent proceeds with its best judgement instead of stalling on a question nobody sees. The tool summary lists it as skipped with the reason.

Enabling Tools

Tools are automatically available in chat mode. For single prompts:

# File tools are always available
janito "Read the README.md file"

Tool integrations that are not built-in (Gmail, code search, OneDrive) are provided by plugins — see Plugins.

Tool Progress

Tools report progress in real-time:

📖 Reading files...
📊 Processing: 50/100 files
✅ Completed: 100 files (2.3MB)

Progress messages go to stderr so they don't interfere with tool output.