# How we built a virtual filesystem for our Assistant

DevFeed: [How we built a virtual filesystem for our Assistant](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-we-built-a-virtual-filesystem-for-our-assistant-31031.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.mintlify.com/blog/how-we-built-a-virtual-filesystem-for-our-assistant>)

Author: Dens Sumesh

Published: 2026-03-24T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Mintlify Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mintlify-blog.md>)

Topics: [Filesystems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/filesystems.md>), [Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/retrieval-augmented-generation-rag.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [Bash](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bash.md>), [Unix](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/unix.md>), [TypeScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/typescript.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [developer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developer.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [filesystem](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/filesystem.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [pricing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pricing.md>), [rag](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rag.md>), [typescript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/typescript.md>), [unix](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/unix.md>), [vercel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vercel.md>), [virtual](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/virtual.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how Mintlify built ChromaFs, a virtual filesystem for its documentation assistant. ChromaFs translates UNIX commands into queries against an existing Chroma database, allowing the assistant to search, read, and traverse documentation without cloning a repository into a sandbox.

## Source excerpt

We replaced expensive sandboxes with ChromaFs, a virtual filesystem over Chroma, to give our docs AI assistant the ability to explore documentation like a developer would.