{"slug":"search-and-summarize-files-on-your-computer","url":"https://agentics.page/recipes/search-and-summarize-files-on-your-computer","title":"Let your AI assistant search and summarize files on your computer","problem":"Your documents, invoices, and contracts live in folders on your machine — and you want to ask questions about them (\"find the contract that mentions X\", \"sum up these invoices\") without uploading anything anywhere.","audience":"anyone","skills":[{"slug":"filesystem","url":"https://agentics.page/skills/filesystem","api":"https://agentics.page/api/skills/filesystem"}],"clients":["claude-desktop","claude-code","cursor","vscode"],"timeMinutes":4,"steps":[{"title":"Decide which folder to share","body":"The skill only sees folders you explicitly list in its configuration — for example ~/Documents/Invoices. Everything else on your machine stays invisible. Pick something small and harmless for your first test."},{"title":"Install the Filesystem skill","body":"Use the install widget below. Important: replace the example folder path (~/Documents) in the snippet with the folder you actually want to share."},{"title":"Restart and ask","body":"Fully restart the app, then paste the prompt below — adjust the folder name to yours."}],"prompt":"List all PDF files in the folder I shared with you, grouped by month based on the file date. Then open the three most recent ones and give me a one-line summary of each.","expectedResult":"The assistant lists your actual files with dates, reads the recent ones, and summarizes them — entirely on your machine, no upload involved.","troubleshooting":[{"q":"It says it has no access to my files.","a":"Check the folder path in the configuration: it must be an absolute path (e.g. /Users/yourname/Documents/Invoices, not a relative one), and the app must be fully restarted after the change."},{"q":"`node -v` errors in the terminal.","a":"Local skills run on Node.js. Install the LTS version from nodejs.org, then restart your AI app. This is a one-time setup that all npm-based skills share."},{"q":"Can it also write or delete files?","a":"The skill supports writing within the allowed folders if you ask it to. If you want read-only behavior, simply never prompt it to write — or share a copy of the folder instead of the original while testing."}],"lastReviewed":"2026-06-10","verified":null}