View Attachment

view-attachment

When a message includes attachments, you see file paths like:

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attachments:
  - state/attachments/12345-screenshot.png

These are real files on disk. You can't see them inline, but you have several ways to inspect them depending on the file type.

Step 1: Identify the File Type

Check the extension:

• Images: .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp, .svg, .bmp
• Text/code: .txt, .md, .py, .js, .json, .csv, .log, .yaml, .toml
• Documents: .pdf
• Other: anything else

Step 2: Choose a Viewing Strategy

For Text-Based Files

Read them directly — these are just text:

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cat state/attachments/12345-notes.txt

For Images (When You Can't View Them Natively)

Try these approaches in order of usefulness:

Option A: Describe from context Often the surrounding message gives enough context. If someone says "look at this error" and attaches a screenshot, the error is probably in their message text too. Ask if unclear.

Option B: File metadata Get dimensions, format, and size to understand what you're looking at:

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file state/attachments/12345-image.png
identify state/attachments/12345-image.png 2>/dev/null  # if ImageMagick available

Option C: OCR with Tesseract Extract text content from screenshots, documents, or photos of text:

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tesseract state/attachments/12345-screenshot.png stdout 2>/dev/null

Option D: Convert to SVG (for simple graphics/charts) Trace bitmap images into vector format you can reason about:

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# Install if needed: apt-get install -y potrace
convert state/attachments/12345-chart.png pbm:- | potrace --svg -o - 2>/dev/null

SVG output is XML text — you can read the paths and shapes.

Option E: Base64 encode If another tool or API accepts base64 images, encode it:

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base64 -w0 state/attachments/12345-image.png

Warning: base64 output is large. Only use this if you're passing it to a vision-capable API or tool, not for your own comprehension.

Option F: Pixel sampling (last resort) For very simple images, sample pixel values at key coordinates:

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# Get the color at specific pixel coordinates (requires ImageMagick)
convert state/attachments/12345-image.png -format '%[pixel:p{100,100}]' info: 2>/dev/null

For PDFs

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# Extract text
pdftotext state/attachments/12345-document.pdf - 2>/dev/null

Step 3: Be Honest About Limitations

If none of these approaches give you useful information:

1. Say what you tried
2. Describe what you CAN tell (file size, type, metadata)
3. Ask the human to describe what's in the attachment

Never pretend you can see an image when you can't. Never hallucinate image contents.