Tools

The tools block toggles built-in runtime tools. Each toggle is optional; omitted fields are filled in with defaults on load. All tool toggles default to true except browser.enabled, which defaults to false.

Fields

Field	Default	Tool(s) disabled when false
todo.enabled	true	todo — the task list tool.
fetch.enabled	true	fetch — fetching URL content (and optionally saving it to disk via save_as).
filesystem.enabled	true	Filesystem tools (read_file, read_multiple_files, edit_file, edit_multiple_files, etc.) and grep, which is bundled under this same toggle.
shell.enabled	true	shell, shell_output, and shell_stop — foreground commands plus background jobs.
sleep.enabled	true	sleep — pausing execution for a duration.
browser.enabled	false	Browser automation via an injected default Playwright MCP server (@playwright/mcp). There is no separate first-party browser tool API — see Tools → Browser.
subagents.enabled	true	launch_subagent — built-in read-only subagent launcher (kind: research, code-review, quality-analyst, design-review).

think, ask_user, get_current_time/convert_time, and switch_mode are always registered and have no config toggle. Design-mode tools (preview_design, stop_design_preview, export_design) are mode-gated — they appear only in design mode, not via a tools.* toggle. web_search is controlled separately by search.enabled, not by this block. MCP-provided tools and installed skills aren’t affected by tools either — see MCP and Skills.

For what each tool does and its arguments, plus the tool-approval flow (which is independent of these enable/disable toggles and not persisted in config.json), see Tools.

Example configs

Defaults (all tools on — equivalent to omitting tools entirely):

{
  "tools": {
    "todo": { "enabled": true },
    "fetch": { "enabled": true },
    "filesystem": { "enabled": true },
    "shell": { "enabled": true },
    "sleep": { "enabled": true },
    "browser": { "enabled": false },
    "subagents": { "enabled": true }
  }
}

Read-only setup — no shell, no filesystem writes, no subagents (only toggles the ones you want off; the rest keep their defaults):

{
  "tools": {
    "shell": { "enabled": false },
    "filesystem": { "enabled": false },
    "subagents": { "enabled": false }
  }
}