ofw_download_attachment
Download an OurFamilyWizard message attachment by fileId and return readable content, extracting text from PDFs, Office files, and spreadsheets or delivering images/bytes.
Instructions
Download an OFW message attachment by fileId and return content you can actually read. Inline delivery walks a ladder and returns the first rung that works: (1) host-renderable images (PNG/JPEG/GIF/WEBP) come back as ImageContent; (2) .xlsx/.csv/.tsv, .pdf, .docx, .pptx and text files come back as EXTRACTED CONTENT — per-sheet CSV, per-page/slide text, document text — in the response JSON under extracted; (3) anything else comes back as an EmbeddedResource blob of the raw bytes. Images and raw bytes are only returned inline up to 10 MiB; a larger file fails with a tool error that says how to get it instead (extracted text is unaffected — it is bounded by maxChars). The meta block names the rung as deliveredVia and, when it falls through to bytes, lists what was tried in deliveryAttempts. Reported mime types are always normalized to a bare media type (no charset/name parameters). In disk mode the bytes are saved to ~/Downloads/ofw-mcp/ and the response carries the absolute path; pass extract:true to ALSO get the extracted content in that response. The default for inline can be flipped server-side via the OFW_INLINE_ATTACHMENTS env var. On a hosted deployment with no filesystem, disk mode is unavailable, so inline is forced (forcedInline:true) rather than failing — a saveTo path never costs you the content. fileId comes from attachments[].fileId on ofw_get_message. Override disk destination with OFW_ATTACHMENTS_DIR or saveTo; saveTo must stay inside the attachments directory, and an existing file is never overwritten unless force:true. Re-downloading to the same path is a no-op (disk mode only).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| force | No | Re-download even if already on disk, replacing any existing file at the destination. Default false. Ignored when inline:true (inline always fetches fresh bytes, or reuses an on-disk copy if present). | |
| parts | No | Which sheets / slides / pages to extract, e.g. "1-3,5" (1-based positions) or a sheet name like "2026". A bare number matches either a position or a name. Omit for everything. Unselected parts are listed in `extracted.omitted`. | |
| fileId | Yes | Attachment file id (from ofw_get_message → attachments[].fileId) | |
| inline | No | If true, return content inline as MCP content blocks and skip the disk write. If false, write to disk and return the path — except on a hosted deployment with no filesystem, where inline is forced (forcedInline:true) so the content is still returned. If omitted, falls back to the OFW_INLINE_ATTACHMENTS env var (default: false = disk). | |
| saveTo | No | Path or directory to write to, INSIDE the attachments directory (OFW_ATTACHMENTS_DIR, default ~/Downloads/ofw-mcp); a relative path is resolved against it and anything outside it is refused. If a directory (trailing /), the OFW filename is used. Default: <attachments dir>/<fileId>-<filename>. An existing file is not overwritten unless force:true. Ignored when inline is in effect. | |
| extract | No | Whether to extract readable content from the file. Default: on for inline delivery of any non-image type, off in disk mode. Set false to get the raw bytes inline instead of extracted text (e.g. to hash or re-upload the file); set true in disk mode to get both the saved path and the extracted content. | |
| maxChars | No | Ceiling on extracted characters (default 50000). Over it, content is clipped on a row/line boundary, `truncated` is set, and anything dropped whole is listed in `extracted.omitted`. |