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Piebald provides a set of built-in tools that are available to all models.
  • ReadFile: Reads a file from the file system. Does not add line prefixes. Auto-approved for file paths in the current project.
  • WriteFile: Writes the given contents to a file on disk. Overwrite existing files, if any. Auto-approved in auto-accept edits mode for file paths in the current project.
  • EditFile: Replaces a given old string with a given new string. Auto-approved in auto-accept edits mode for file paths in the current project.
  • Glob: Search for file paths via glob patterns, e.g. **/*.ts.
  • Grep: Search for text in a folder recursively using regular expressions. Accepts a variety of ripgrep-like options.
  • WebFetch: Returns the text content of page at the given URL.
  • WebSearch: Searches the web for the given query using the configured search service.
  • RunTerminalCommand: Runs the given terminal command. Uses sh on macOS and Linux and cmd /C on Windows by default.
  • TodoWrite: Updates the current todo list for the chat.
  • ProposePlanToUser: Prompts you to exit plan mode by displaying the given plan text as markdown.
  • AskUserQuestion: Allows the model to ask you any number of questions with one or more answers per question.
  • LaunchSubagent: Launches a subagent.
  • CreateGoal: Allows the model to create a goal.
  • UpdateGoal: Allows the model to update its goal.
  • GetGoal: Gets the objective and status of the current goal.
  • SearchChats: Allows the model to search the user’s past chats for a specific query. Supports filtering by role (user or AI), searching within a date range, searching by regex, and more.
  • ListMcpResources: Lists all MCP resources.
  • ReadMcpResource: Reads an MCP resource.

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RunTerminalCommand

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Configuring the shell to be used for command execution

Internally, the RunTerminalCommand tool executes the given command using sh -c on UNIX systems (macOS and Linux) and cmd.exe /C on Windows. However, you can change the default shell to a preset or a custom command. Go to Settings → Built-in Tools and select a preset for Terminal Shell. The default presets are: UNIX:
  • Bourne Shell (/bin/sh)
  • Bash (/bin/bash)
  • Zsh (/bin/zsh)
Windows
  • Command Prompt (cmd.exe)
  • Windows PowerShell
  • Git Bash (MinGW)
Git for Windows must be installed in order to use Git Bash in Piebald. Download it from gitforwindows.org.

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Using a custom shell

You can also specify a custom shell, which is useful when you want to use a shell not explicitly mentioned above. For example, if you have custom aliases in a shell like Fish. To use a custom shell, set Terminal Shell to Custom… and then enter each individual argument required to invoke the shell with a command. Most UNIX shells accept a -c argument, e.g. fish -c "...". Use {command} as the last argument.
Do not wrap the {command} argument in quotes unless you’re using a custom shell that requires it. When you use a custom shell, Piebald passes each argument to the shell directly without needing to quote arguments.
We plan to automatically detect installed shells so you won’t have to go the custom route for the majority of cases.

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Live, interactive terminal commands

Available in Piebald Basic (Free) When the model runs a terminal command, Piebald executes the command in an integrated terminal instance embedded in the app. This means that interactive commands and commands that output colors and other ANSI escape codes are supported. When the command is interactive (i.e. requires user interaction/input like npm init, sudo commands, etc.), you can enter input and navigate options directly inside the tool call UI. This opens interesting possibilities, including running full REPLs like node, or even TUIs like claude! Terminal sessions are not currently preserved across multiple terminal commands. For example, if the model sets a shell variable in one command, the next command will not be able to echo it. This is a limitation that we plan on removing in the future.

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Command output is truncated

Many commands return lots of output—compiling large projects, running large test suites, installing applications, etc. Instead of returning all this output directly to the LLM, the output is truncated to the first 10,000 and last 10,000 characters, as these windows usually contain the most important, useful information.

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ProposePlanToUser

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Copying plans to clipboard

Available in Piebald Pro When the model proposes a plan, it can be convenient to copy the plan to your clipboard to paste into a new chat, share to a teammate, or save to a file. With Piebald Pro, plans proposed by the AI have a copy button () that will copy the markdown contents of the plan to your clipboard: Screenshot of a plan with the copy button circled

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WebSearch

By default, the WebSearch tool uses the free web search service Exa. However, if you’ve hit your Exa rate limits or you’re not satisfied with the results from Exa web searches, you can change the search service to DuckDuckGo by setting Settings → Web Search → Search Backend to DuckDuckGo.