The Rufous-breasted Spinetail uses secondary forest and second-growth scrub, gleaning invertebrates from vegetation. A historical museum account describes plumage of specimens from southern Mexico and Central America.
A historical museum account for specimens from southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala describes brown upperparts, chestnut outer wings, a dark rufous tail, a black throat lightly speckled with white, and a broad chestnut band across the breast.
The Oiseaux.net species profile, drawing on AVONET 2023, lists secondary forest, second-growth scrub, thickets, and undergrowth, and classifies its foraging as gleaning arboreal invertebrates.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.