read - File Read - CowAgent

Read file content. Supports text files, PDF, Office documents (Word / Excel / PPT), images (returns metadata), and more.

Dependencies

No extra dependencies, available by default.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`path`	string	Yes	File path, relative paths are based on workspace directory
`offset`	integer	No	Start line number (1-indexed), negative values read from the end, e.g. `-50` for the last 50 lines
`limit`	integer	No	Number of lines to read
`pages`	string	No	PDF only: page range such as `3`, `1-5`, `10-`. Defaults to the first 20 pages, at most 20 pages per call

Output format

Each line is prefixed with its line number and a pipe, so the Agent can locate positions and so output matches search_files:

from config import conf

def main():
   print(conf())

The line numbers are display aids, not file content. When editing with edit, do not include prefixes like 1| in oldText / newText - they will be rejected.

A single read is capped at 2000 lines or 50KB; beyond that the output is truncated and ends with a hint on using offset to continue.

Credential protection

~/.cow/.env, which holds API keys, cannot be read through this tool. Use the env_config tool instead.

Use Cases

View configuration files, log files
Read code files for analysis
Extract text from PDF, Word and Excel files
Check image/video file info

Tools System

Built-in Tools

Optional Tools

MCP Tools

read - File Read

Dependencies

Parameters

Output format

Credential protection

Use Cases

​Dependencies

​Parameters

​Output format

​Credential protection

​Use Cases

Dependencies

Parameters

Output format

Credential protection

Use Cases