Built-in toolsets

xah ships with a collection of toolsets that cover common agent capabilities. A custom harness can enable the toolsets it needs through its Toolsets definition.

Toolsets

• Context — Manage the conversation context, including compacting it when needed.
• Files — Read, write, edit, move, search, create, and remove files and directories.
• Knowledgebase — Search and retrieve web pages and fixed collections.
• Management — List available toolsets and activate them at runtime.
• Python — Run Python code, manage packages, and run tests.
• Shell — Execute shell commands.
• Skills — Discover and load agent skills.
• Subagent — Delegate tasks to subagents.
• Terminals — Start and manage background shell commands.
• Todo — Manage a todo list and its task statuses.
• Utils — General-purpose utilities, including pausing execution for a fixed duration.
• Web — Search and research the web.

The default xah harness enables Context, Files, Terminals, Shell, Python, Skills, Todo, Utils, and Management. Knowledgebase, Subagent, and Web are also included in the built-in catalogue and can be enabled by a custom harness when they are needed. The available toolset catalogue does not change during a session. Activation is one-way for the session; activated toolsets stay active, so they do not need to be activated again on every turn.

Shell and background terminals

The Shell tool accepts a script argument and runs it in the working directory. If a command needs adversarial review, the review includes the command as well as the reasons for the decision. Shell commands have no execution timeout by default; set timeout when a limit is needed.

Long-running commands continue in the background as managed terminals. Their status messages include a short output tail and how recently output was produced. The terminal status tool can return summaries for all managed terminals when called without a terminal ID; use the Files tools to inspect or search the complete output log.