The "tangible file system" is a document management and access infrastructure for the ubiquitous computing era. It provides a transparent user interface which takes advantage of physical user actions for the purpose of directory management, data sharing and document location tracking. This is achieved by digitally augmenting both documents and document containers to detect the location of physical information and to trigger corresponding update actions in the electronic world. The system is built using the Datlet [9] architecture to allow any ?tool-objects? to be applied to ?data-objects?, thereby enabling an even more natural user interaction based on affordances.