Capture the terminal buffer as plain text. Faster and cheaper than a screenshot - use this when you only need the text content.
AI agents call snapshot to retrieve information from Tui without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool retrieves and queries terminal display data without side effects. It performs no creation, modification, execution, deletion, or financial operations. While it runs on a system that can launch and control TUI applications, snapshot itself is purely observational—it reads existing state and returns data. Confidence is high because the description unambiguously describes a passive data-capture operation.
From the tool's definition Tool explicitly 'Capture[s] the terminal buffer as plain text' with no modification or execution capability. The comparison to screenshot emphasizes it is a read-only text retrieval operation ('only need the text content').
Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access snapshot gives an agent:
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and Tui, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for snapshot:
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"snapshot": {}
}
}snapshot is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
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Capture the terminal buffer as plain text. Faster and cheaper than a screenshot - use this when you only need the text content. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Tui MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Tui MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for snapshot: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Tui. Nothing to install.
snapshot is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the snapshot rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for snapshot. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
snapshot is provided by the Tui MCP server (nvms/tui-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Start from Tui, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.
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13 Tui tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.