Mintlify built ChromaFs — a virtual filesystem that intercepts Unix commands (ls, cd, cat, grep) and translates them into queries against their Chroma vector database. Boot time dropped from approximately 46 seconds to 100 milliseconds, cost went from $0.0137 per conversation to zero marginal cost, and the system now handles 30,000+ conversations daily across 850,000 monthly sessions.
This extends Agentic search beats RAG for live codebases beyond code into documentation: RAG chunk retrieval fails when answers span multiple pages, but agents with filesystem navigation can explore, discover, and assemble context across documents. The key insight is that agents don’t need real sandboxes — they need the illusion of Files are the universal interface between humans and agents. ChromaFs also pre-filters access control by excluding files from the tree before the agent initializes, connecting to the principle from Structure plus reasoning beats flat similarity for complex domains that structured navigation outperforms flat similarity search.