MCP Prompts

Once the Files.com MCP Server has been connected, you can use conversational prompts to interact with your Files.com site.

AI models are updated regularly, so the same prompt may elicit different responses over time.

AI responses also differ between, and within, chat sessions. In a new session, the AI has no memory of previous prompts, so the initial response is unaffected by previous sessions. If you use the same prompt multiple times in a session, or after using a related prompt, the AI infers additional context and applies it to the response.

The AI also attempts to deduce missing information or missing context on its own, which can lead to unexpected results. Be as explicit as possible with your prompts.

Example Prompts

The following prompts provide examples for each of the tools available in our MCP Server.

File Management

"Upload the file 'C:\path\to\report.pdf' to the '/documents' folder"

"Download the quarterly_results.xlsx file from '/reports/2025' to my local downloads folder"

"Create a new folder called 'client_projects' in the root directory"

"Copy the file '/templates/contract.docx' to '/active_projects/new_client/'"

"Move all PDF files with 2024 in their name from '/invoices' folder to '/archive/2024/'"

"Delete the old backup file at '/backups/old_backup.zip'"

"Show me all files and folders in the '/marketing' directory"

User & Group Management

"Create a new user with username 'john_doe', email 'john@company.com', and assign them to the marketing group"

"List all users in the system and show their details"

"Update user 'john_doe' to change their company name to 'New Corp'"

"Delete the user 'john_doe'"

"Create a new group called 'Design Team' with users Jane Smith, John Doe, Jesse Jones"

"Add user Jane Smith as an admin to the existing 'Marketing' group"

"Create a report in HTML format showing me all groups and their members. Include charts and graphs to show totals and aggregated information."

Permissions & Security

"Give user Jesse Jones read/write access to the '/shared/projects' folder"

"Set up permissions so the 'Sales' group can only read files in '/client_data'"

"Remove all permissions for user Jane Smith from the '/confidential' directory"

"Create a report in CSV format showing me all permissions set for the '/finance' folder"

File Sharing

"Share the files in '/project_deliverables' with jane_smith@company.com and make sure that it expires in 7 days."

"Set up a password-protected share link for client file sharing with max 5 downloads, containing only the PDF files in '/clients/client_A'. This share link requires registration."

"Show me all active share links and their download statistics"

"Add a notification so I'm alerted when someone downloads from the share link that was sent to jane_smith@company.com"

"Update the share link to jane_smith@company.com to extend its expiration date by 2 weeks"

Monitoring & History

"Show me the complete file history for '/important/contract.pdf'"

"List all logins from the past week"

"Show me all file activities performed by user 'jane_smith'"

"Display folder access history for '/sensitive_data' directory"

"Show me all SFTP activity from the last hour"

"List all automation and sync activity from today to my Azure storage"

Automation & Remote Servers

"List all configured remote servers and their connection status"

"Show me all automations currently active on the system"

Reports and Dashboards

An AI can create various types of reports that include visual elements to provide a dashboard view of the report data. Reports can combine data from multiple sources. In the prompt, provide information about the type of report you want, the data sources to use, the output format, visual elements that you'd like to see, colors to use, and whether the data is to be aggregated or totaled. For example:

"Create a report about the users in my site. Include charts and graphs to show aggregated information and totals."

"Create a permissions report that shows how users, folders, groups, and permissions are related. Show which user and group can access each folder. Use red as the primary color for charts and graphs."

"Create a report about my site in HTML format. Include charts and graphs to show aggregated information and totals. Include information about users, groups, permissions, share links, files, folders, automations, and logs. Show how these items are related to each other. For the log information, show a history of what activity has been happening on my site. Show things like the most recent activities, the most common or frequent activities, activity peaks by date and time, and so on. Include file transfers and file actions that occurred in my site. Include information about the types of files, who sent those files, and when files were sent. Use a business casual tone for the report."

Hallucinations

In AI and large language models (LLMs), "hallucination" refers to incorrect or fabricated information that the AI produces.

AI models generate outputs based on statistical patterns learned from vast data, but they don't have an understanding of the real world. This can lead them to create information that sounds reasonable but isn't actually true.

AI sometimes tries to "fill in the blanks" for you when it cannot determine the exact context of a prompt, or when a chat session exceeds a certain threshold and earlier chat history is purged from its memory.

Expanding prompts to include explicit rules for checking and validating data reduces hallucinations and prevents dummy data from being inserted into responses. For example, add these to your prompts:

"Only use data from my Files.com site. Do not include or insert any dummy data, placeholder data, or data from anywhere else. Validate that only data from my Files.com site was used in the report."

"Ask questions before generating."

Coaching the AI

You can coach an AI by providing instructions before asking it to perform tasks. For example:

"Never delete anything without checking with me first. Always ask me for confirmation before deleting anything."

"Do not create anything in my site, such as users, groups, folders, etc., without asking me first to provide input for the various data fields."

"When creating visual items, such as reports and diagrams, use the following color scheme: Primary color is red, secondary colors are blue, indigo, and purple."

You can also train an AI to perform multi-step processes by explicitly stating how the steps are related or what the steps are. For example:

"Whenever you create a user account, also create a corresponding home folder for the user. The home folder is always located as a subfolder within the '/Users/' folder and always named with the username of the user account. For example, if the username is 'jane_smith' then the home folder to create is '/Users/jane_smith'. Usernames must always be lower case. Convert the username to lower case if it is not already in lower case. Give the user account full read+write permission to their home folder. Within the home folder, always create 2 subfolders; one named 'in' and one named 'out'. Finally, always add the new user account to the 'Partners' group."

Some AI clients provide an option for saving instructions so that they are preserved between sessions.