CtxNest is a local-first, centralized context engine providing AI agents with 42 tools to manage versioned markdown knowledge across projects and a personal knowledge base, optimized for context window economy.

File Reading

• read_file / read_files / read_file_by_path — Read single, batch (up to 200), or path-based files

• read_file_outline — Headings-only outline without loading full content

• read_section / read_file_lines — Read a single heading's body or a specific line range

• describe_file — File metadata (tags, size, history, backlinks) without loading content

File Writing

• create_file / create_files — Create single or batch (up to 200) files

• update_file / update_file_section — Full replace or surgical per-heading update (auto-commits to git)

• delete_file / delete_files — Delete single or batch (up to 500) files

• move_file — Rename or relocate a file

• journal_append — Append a timestamped entry to today's journal

Search & Discovery

• search — FTS5 full-text search with inline excerpts and highlights

• bundle_search — Search and concatenate results into a token-budgeted XML/Markdown blob

• regex_search / grep_in_file — Cross-file or within-file regex search

• find_related — Files sharing tags, ranked by overlap

• whats_new — Files created/modified since a checkpoint

• project_map — Compact indented outline of an entire project or knowledge base

Tagging & Favorites

• add_tags / remove_tags / list_tags — Manage tags

• set_favorite — Mark/unmark favorites

• suggest_tags — Propose tags based on corpus (no LLM required)

• tag_search_results — Bulk-apply tags to all files matching a query

Folders & Projects

• list_files / list_folders — List files or folders with filters

• create_folder / delete_folder — Create (nested) or recursively delete folders

• register_project / list_projects — Register external repos and list all projects

• stats — Aggregate counts, top tags, per-project breakdown

Versioning & Integrity

• get_history / get_diff / restore_file — Git history, diffs, and rollback

• commit_backup — Commit and push a project to git

• diff_against_disk / refresh_index — Detect and reconcile drift from external edits

Web Clipping

• clip_url — Fetch a page, extract content via Readability, and store as Markdown (supports auth-walled pages with cookie/token retry)

All file-returning tools include est_tokens and size_bytes; list/search tools inline tags and excerpts to minimize round-trips.