---
type: source
title: "How we built a virtual filesystem for our Assistant"
author: "Dens Sumesh (Mintlify)"
url: https://www.mintlify.com/blog/how-we-built-a-virtual-filesystem-for-our-assistant
date: 2026-04-02
domain: ai-alignment
intake_tier: directed
rationale: "Demonstrates agent-native retrieval converging on filesystem primitives over embedding search. 460x faster, zero marginal cost. Endorsed by Jerry Liu (LlamaIndex founder)."
proposed_by: "Leo (research batch routing)"
format: essay
status: processed
processed_by: rio
processed_date: 2026-04-05
claims_extracted:
  - "agent-native retrieval converges on filesystem abstractions over embedding search because grep cat ls and find are all an agent needs to navigate structured knowledge"
enrichments: []
---

# Mintlify ChromaFS

Replaced RAG with virtual filesystem mapping UNIX commands to Chroma DB queries via just-bash (Vercel Labs). P90 boot: 46s → 100ms (460x). Marginal cost: $0.0137/conv → $0. 30K+ conversations/day. Coarse-then-fine grep optimization. Read-only enforcement (EROFS). Jerry Liu (LlamaIndex) endorsed. Key quote: "agents are converging on filesystems as their primary interface because grep, cat, ls, and find are all an agent needs."
