Griptape Tool: FileManager

The FileManager tool is how your Griptape agent stops being confined to the conversation and starts touching actual files on the machine running ComfyUI. It wraps Griptape's FileManagerTool, which gives the agent the ability to list, read, write, and generally operate on files in its working directory. Want an agent that reads a folder of text files and summarizes them? Or one that writes its output to a file instead of dumping it into the UI? This is the tool that gets you there.

But let's be direct about what you're granting: this is the "the agent can touch my disk" tool, and that is a power-and-risk conversation, not just a convenience. The whole ecosystem knows how ugly a malicious or misbehaving custom node can get - ComfyUI has no sandboxing, and any node runs Python with your user's permissions. FileManager is the legitimate version of that power, but the moment you wire it into an agent, that agent can read and write files on your machine. That's exactly what you want when you're building a document-processing pipeline. It's also exactly what you don't want on an agent you don't fully control.

How it works

The node creates a FileManagerTool and returns it as a TOOL_LIST. The agent can then invoke file operations against its working directory (roughly where ComfyUI runs). Nothing happens at graph-build time - again, tools are capabilities, and the agent decides when to use them.

The input that matters

• off_prompt - and here's where this tool differs from most: the default is True (Keep output private). That's deliberate and important. With off-prompt on, the contents of files stay out of the LLM's context - the tool can read a file, process it, and only hand back what you asked for, without shoveling the whole file into the model as tokens. This matters for two reasons: privacy (you don't want a sensitive document flowing through an API you don't control) and cost (file contents are tokens, and tokens are money). The FileManager tool is one of the clearest places where you should think before flipping that toggle.

The single output, TOOL (TOOL_LIST), wires into your agent's tools.

Install

Part of the ComfyUI-Griptape pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/griptape-ai/ComfyUI-Griptape

or ComfyUI Manager → search "Griptape" → install → restart.

Where people get burned

The classic stumble: the agent says it can't find a file you know is there. FileManager operates relative to its working directory, so absolute paths or files outside that directory can confuse it. Give it clear paths and test with a file you know is in scope.

The bigger caution is behavioral. Since off-prompt defaults to on, the agent can't see file contents unless you either flip it or explicitly ask for results - so if your agent seems to "know" nothing about the files, check that toggle first. And the security angle bears repeating: keep this tool off any agent you didn't build, and remember the ComfyUI security model is "trust the nodes you install, because nothing is sandboxed." FileManager is the one tool where that trust should be an explicit decision, not an afterthought.