A Lazy File Tidier That Never Deletes Anything

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady

What I Built

SlothNest is a lazy file tidier. You point it at a messy folder, and a small open-weight model reads each file's name and a peek at its contents, then sorts it into a category folder with a cleaner name. I got tired of my Downloads folder looking like a junk drawer, so this does the sorting for me.

It's built to be careful, not clever. It never deletes anything, it only moves files into a SlothNest folder, and it keeps an undo ledger so one command puts everything back. It also works through a small batch at a time, because sloths don't rush.

Demo

Before: five messy files in a folder. Then python sloth.py apply sorts them, find shows where they ended up, and python sloth.py undo puts everything back exactly as it was.

Code

SlothNest repo

How I Built It

• Model: Gemma 3 (1B), an open-weight model from Google, served locally by Ollama.
• Glue: about 100 lines of Python using the ollama library, with SQLite for the undo ledger.
• How it works: for each file, the model returns JSON with a category, a short new name, and a one-line reason. The script validates the answer before moving anything.

The 1B model isn't perfect. Sometimes it returns a category that isn't in my list, or a filename with a stray space. One of those showed up in my first test, where untitled3.py got a leading space in its name. I fixed it with one line of code, and I added a fallback that sorts by file extension if the model's answer is unusable. A tiny model plus a few guardrails turned out to be enough.

I built and tested this in Google Cloud Shell with a fake messy folder. The tool is designed to run on a laptop against a real Downloads folder, and the settings (SLOTH_WATCH, SLOTH_MODEL) are environment variables, so no code changes are needed.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

A file tidier needs to read your files, and I don't want to send my receipts and homework to someone else's server just to rename them.

• Privacy: with an open-weight model running through Ollama, the files stay on the machine doing the sorting.
• Cost: no API key and no per-file bill. It's free to run on every download, forever.
• Swappable: changing models is one setting (SLOTH_MODEL=...), so I can trade speed for accuracy without touching the code.

My Agent Session

N/A

The Lazy Payoff

I only tested this on five fake files, so I won't pretend I have a time-saved number yet. The plan is to schedule it (cron or Task Scheduler) to sort a few files every half hour, so the folder stays tidy without me doing anything.

Prize Categories

• Best Use of Gemma