Skillscript

Upgrade impact: none (additive). New optional encoding kwarg on file_read; existing reads default to utf8 exactly as before.

• file_read(path="…", encoding="base64") reads a file's raw bytes and base64-encodes them, so a binary file (image, PDF) can be inlined into an API payload — e.g. an attachments:[{content: "<base64>", …}] JSON body. This has to be a read-mode, not a pipe filter: the default utf8 read decodes bytes to text (corrupting non-text bytes with U+FFFD) before any filter could run, so base64-ing a binary file after a text read would encode garbage. Reading the raw bytes at read time is the only correct path (adopter request 7130c3bd). Node's base64 emits a single line (no 76-column wrapping), which is what inline JSON wants — and needs no base64 shell binary, so the shell allowlist stays untouched.
  • encoding accepts "utf8" (default) or "base64"; anything else is refused at runtime and flagged tier-2 at compile by the new unknown-file-encoding lint rule (so a "bas64" typo is a lint line, not a failed run).
  • The filesystem path allowlist still gates every read, base64 or not — a skill can only base64 a file under an allowlisted root, so this opens no new exfiltration path. (And base64'd file content is data, so a file containing literal {{secret.X}} text is inert under the v0.25.3 author-template-only secret model — no marker-injection through an attachment.)
  • Size note: base64 inflates ~33%, and the encoded blob typically rides inline JSON into a downstream API. The practical wall isn't the runtime — it's the target API's request-size limit (e.g. a mail provider's max message size); an oversized attachment fails at that boundary, not in file_read.