rtk-ai/rtk

`rtk read` does not support reading specific lines

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#1104 opened on Apr 9, 2026

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 (2 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (48,085 stars) (2,914 forks)batch import
effort-smallenhancementgood first issue

Description

I instruct Claude Code to always use rtk read, rtk grep etc instead of the built-in read tool, to make sure it doesn't simply default to using its own built-in tools and thus not save any tokens. The problem is that the Claude Code built-in read tool supports reading a specific range of line numbers, so it tries to e.g. run rtk read <file> <start_line> <end_line>, which first returns the full file contents and then throws two errors. It would be nice if rtk read would support reading a range of line numbers, so that I don't need to explcitly instruct the LLM to use its built-in reading tool if and only if it reads a specific range.

I'm only a newcomer to rtk.ai so if a clean solution already exists, please let me know and I will close this issue!

Contributor guide

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
RustCLI argument parsingrtk codebase basics
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
60
Research direction
The issue requests adding line range support to the `rtk read` command. Start by locating the current read command implementation, likely in `src/commands/read.rs` or similar. Understand how CLI arguments are parsed (e.g., with clap or structopt). Add optional `start line` and `end line` arguments, validate that start <= end, and modify the file reading logic to output only that range. Update the help text and add corresponding unit tests. Check existing tests for patterns.