How does the roots workflow function in practice?

The workflow follows four steps. First, the user makes a request involving a file, such as asking to convert a video. Second, Claude calls list_roots to discover which directories it can access. Third, Claude calls a directory reading tool on those accessible directories to locate the specific file. Fourth, once found, Claude calls the appropriate tool with the full file path. This happens transparently to the user, who can simply refer to files by name without providing complete paths. The roots mechanism handles the file discovery automatically.