catalog / tool-behaviors

Claude.ai's view rejects relative paths and bare filenames

verified

Claude.ai's view tool rejects relative paths and bare filenames with a validation error; only absolute paths starting at / work.

  • Category: tool-behaviors
  • Applies to: Claude.ai ✅ | Claude Code ❌ | Claude Desktop ❌
  • Verified on: Claude.ai web, 2026-05-17
  • Verification tier: verified
  • Severity: Hard error

Symptom

A SKILL.md that tells Claude.ai to view a relatively-named file errors. No silent resolution attempt — the tool refuses outright.

Cause

view's description requires an absolute path and includes the realpath hint verbatim in its error.

Reproduction

Reproduced 2026-05-17 on Claude.ai web: view("references/foo.md") → references/foo.md is not an absolute path. Run realpath references/foo.md to get the absolute path, then view that.

Fix

Always pass absolute paths to view. If a SKILL.md uses a relative path, instruct Claude to resolve it first via bash_tool (realpath or readlink -f).

Notes

See also code-read-resolves-against-cwd-not-skill-dir.md for the Code-side analogue, and ../skill-structure/references-directory-path-resolution.md for the full skill-structure implication.