File Editing

File editing lets a specialist make precise, targeted changes to files your team maintains — notes, JSON state, drafts — instead of rewriting the whole document every time it touches one.

What it lets a specialist do

• Find and replace text across a file, or across every file in a folder.
• Apply a patch to one section without disturbing the rest.
• Update a single field inside a JSON file while leaving the surrounding structure intact.
• Show a diff of a proposed change before saving it.
• Undo the most recent edit if something looks wrong.

This is the capability behind any file a specialist keeps updating over time — a running status log, a shared draft, a small configuration file — rather than files it only ever creates fresh.

How to enable it

File editing sits alongside the Files & Workspace capability and doesn't need a separate connection. Confirm it's on for a specialist's role if that role needs to modify existing files rather than only create new ones.

1. Make sure the file already exists in the workspace, or have the specialist create it first.
2. Ask for the specific change — "replace X with Y," "update this field," "apply this patch."
3. For a larger change, ask to see the diff before it saves.
4. If the result isn't right, ask it to undo the most recent edit.

Examples

• "In status.md, replace last week's numbers with this week's and update the date in the title."
• "In config.json, set the retry_limit field to 5 and leave everything else unchanged."
• "Show me a diff of the change you're about to make to the onboarding checklist before you save it."
• "Find every TODO in this folder and turn them into a single checklist file."

Why targeted edits matter

A living file — a status log a duty updates daily, a shared notes document, a small JSON settings file a team keeps tweaking — breaks if every run rewrites it from scratch: formatting shifts, unrelated sections change, history gets lost. File editing instead finds the exact line or field to touch and leaves the rest of the file exactly as it was, which is what makes it safe to run the same duty against the same file day after day.

Limits, honestly

• Edits apply to text and structured-text files — Markdown, JSON, CSV, plain text. Binary formats like Word documents or PDFs need their own capability (see Word Documents and PDF Documents).
• A very large rewrite is more reliable done as a few smaller, reviewed steps than one giant patch.
• Undo covers the most recent edit to a file — it isn't full version history back through every change ever made.
• If two duties try to edit the same file at nearly the same time, ask them to run in sequence rather than in parallel to avoid one overwriting the other's change.

Plan minimum: file editing is part of the core workspace toolkit available from the Free plan — see Pricing if you need more scheduled duties running these edits regularly.