Sift ⚡

10x Faster, Safety-First Local File Organizer & Automation Engine
Clean up messy directories instantly. Hazel power for developers, terminal lovers, and automation enthusiasts.

Sift automatically categorizes, moves, compresses, and cleans up your files based on customizable YAML rules and curated community recipes. Built in Rust for blazingly fast execution without risking accidental data loss.

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🔥 Key Features

• ⚡ Blazingly Fast Performance: Scans and organizes thousands of files in milliseconds. Built with zero-overhead Rust primitives.
• 🛡️ Safety-First Architecture: Every single action is logged. Undo any operation with 1-click rollback (sift undo).
• 🔍 Risk-Free Dry-Run: Simulate file organization before making any disk modifications.
• 📊 Real-Time TUI Dashboard: Monitor live directory activity with a modern terminal dashboard (sift watch).
• 🤖 Native macOS Launchd Daemon: Run hands-free continuous file organization in the background (sift daemon start).
• 📦 Curated Recipe Ecosystem: Pre-built rules for Downloads auto-trash, Dev cleanup, Media sorting, and Screenshots (sift recipe list).
• 📸 EXIF & Audio ID3 Metadata Matching: Organize photos by camera make/model and audio tracks by artist/album/genre.
• 🏷️ macOS Finder Color Tags: Filter files by Finder tags and automatically apply or remove color tags (add_tags).
• ⏱️ Time-Based Auto-Archiving: Auto-trash or ZIP compress files modified/created/accessed before N days.
• 🔔 Native macOS Desktop Notifications: Receive Hazel-style background alert banners when files are organized.
• ⚙️ IDE-Ready YAML Schema: Ships with full JSON Schema support for auto-completion and validation in VS Code and Neovim.

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⚡ Quick Start

📦 Installation

One-Line Shell Installer (macOS & Linux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/taevel02/Sift/refs/heads/main/install.sh | sh

Cargo Install

cargo install --path .

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🚀 Common Commands

1. Initialize Configuration

Generate global configuration in ~/.config/sift/config.yaml:

sift init

2. Validate Configuration

Ensure rules and regular expressions are syntax and semantic valid:

sift check

3. Recipe Management Ecosystem

Discover, view, enable, and disable pre-built modular recipes:

# List all available curated recipes and their status
sift recipe list

# Enable a curated recipe (e.g., downloads-auto-trash)
sift recipe enable downloads-auto-trash

# Check active enabled recipes
sift recipe status

# Disable a recipe when no longer needed
sift recipe disable downloads-auto-trash

4. Dry-Run Simulation

See exactly what files would be moved without touching your disk:

sift ~/Downloads

5. Execute File Organization

Run organization and record transaction history:

sift ~/Downloads -x

6. Instant 1-Click Rollback

Made a mistake? Undo the most recent transaction instantly:

sift undo

7. Real-Time Terminal Dashboard (TUI)

Launch the live terminal monitoring dashboard:

# Live simulation mode
sift watch ~/Downloads

# Live execution mode (with Hazel desktop notifications)
sift watch ~/Downloads -x

TUI Keybindings: q / Esc to quit, c to clear logs, u to undo last transaction.

8. Native macOS Background Daemon

Keep your Downloads folder clean automatically 24/7 in the background:

# Start background launchd daemon
sift daemon start

# Check daemon status
sift daemon status

# Stop background daemon
sift daemon stop

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📜 Configuration Example (config.yaml)

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/taevel02/Sift/refs/heads/main/schema.json
version: "1"
notify: true

rules:
  - name: "Organize Camera Photos"
    source_dir: "~/Downloads"
    filters:
      extensions: ["jpg", "png", "heic"]
      exif_camera: "iPhone"
    target_dir: "~/Pictures/Photos/{year}/{month}"
    add_tags: ["Green"]

  - name: "Organize Music Tracks"
    source_dir: "~/Downloads"
    filters:
      extensions: ["mp3", "flac"]
    target_dir: "~/Music/{artist}/{album}"

  - name: "Auto-Trash Old Downloads"
    source_dir: "~/Downloads"
    filters:
      modified_before_days: 7
    action: "trash"

  - name: "Archive PDFs"
    source_dir: "~/Downloads"
    filters:
      extensions: ["pdf"]
    target_dir: "~/Documents/PDFs"

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🤝 Contributing Community Recipes

Have a great file organization workflow? Share it with the community by contributing a new recipe!

1. Create a .yaml file inside the recipes/ directory (e.g., recipes/my-custom-cleaner.yaml).
2. Include the standard $schema header, version, name, description, and rules:

   # yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/taevel02/Sift/refs/heads/main/schema.json
   version: "1"
   name: "my-custom-cleaner"
   description: "Automatically cleans up temporary build artifacts"
   enabled: true
   
   rules:
     - name: "Clean Build Artifacts"
       source_dir: "~/Downloads"
       filters:
         extensions: ["tmp", "log"]
       action: "trash"

3. Test your recipe syntax with sift check.
4. Open a Pull Request on GitHub.

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🛡️ Safety & Collision Policy

When a target destination already contains a file with the same name, Sift automatically applies a non-destructive auto-rename policy (document_1.pdf, document_2.pdf) to protect your data from being overwritten.

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💻 Tech Stack & Dependencies

• Core Engine: Rust (2024 Edition)
• TUI Dashboard: ratatui + crossterm
• File System Monitoring: notify
• CLI Parsing: clap
• OS Trash Support: trash
• Notifications: notify-rust / macOS UserNotifications API

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📄 License & Project Links

• License: Distributed under the MIT License.
• Contribution Guidelines: Check out CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.
• Code of Conduct: Review our community CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
• IDE JSON Schema: Explore schema.json for YAML validation.
• Agent & Architecture Guide: Read AGENTS.md for internal engine specs.

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📈 Star History