SlothSort: A Local AI That Tidies Your Downloads Folder and Never Moves a File Without Asking
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady . What I Built My Downloads folder had files named doc_001.pdf , scan_004.pdf , IMG_8291.jpg , and notes_final_v3.txt . Finding anything meant opening files one by one, figuring out what they contained, renaming them, and dragging them somewhere sensible. I kept putting it off because sorting files is one…
This story explores the creation and functionality of SlothSort, an open-source AI tool designed to organize and rename files within a user's computer. The user, who has been struggling to keep their Downloads folder tidy, created SlothSort to automate the tedious task of sorting through documents, images, and other files. The application uses a local AI model, Google's open-weight Gemma 3 4B, running through Ollama, to analyze the files' contents and propose meaningful filenames and categories.
Users can review these suggestions and approve or modify them before any changes are made to the file system. SlothSort ensures that existing files are never overwritten, deleted, or moved unintentionally, and it maintains an action journal to allow for undoing moves if necessary. The tool emphasizes the importance of keeping sensitive data local, as opposed to uploading it to a cloud-based AI service.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
