A few months ago I got tired of File Explorer. I wanted a column view, instant previews, tabs and a command palette – and I wanted all of it in a small, fast app that doesn't phone home.
So I built Dirwise, a free, open-source (MIT) file manager for Windows 10/11. Last week it went live on the Microsoft Store.
The twist: I'm a product person, not a Rust developer. Almost all of the code was written by an AI coding agent (Claude Code). I designed the features, wrote the specs, tested every build and decided what shipped. This post is about what that actually looked like – including the parts that went wrong.
What Dirwise does
Column, list and icon view with real thumbnails for images, videos and PDFs
Tabs that remember their view and history, plus split view with F5/F6 copy/move
Ctrl+K command palette to jump to any folder or action
Instant preview with Space, tags, and undo/redo for file operations
Recycle Bin view with restore, and admin prompts for protected folders
A Windows 11 title bar with Snap Layouts and optional Acrylic transparency
Light and dark theme, English and Czech
It's built with Tauri 2 (Rust backend, React UI). The installer is about 2.5 MB and there's no telemetry – just an optional once-a-day update check against the GitHub API.
How I worked with the AI
I didn't just type "build me a file manager". That gets you a demo, not a product. What worked for me:
Phases, not one giant prompt. Every version was split into small phases with a clear goal: "column view with keyboard navigation", "tabs", "Recycle Bin", "Store release". Each phase got its own prompt with acceptance criteria – what "done" means.
A second chat for planning. I kept one conversation just for thinking: writing prompts, reviewing the agent's reports, deciding priorities. The coding agent got clean, specific instructions instead of my stream of consciousness.
"Show me the plan first." Almost every prompt ended with "show me the plan, don't commit until I say OK". The plans regularly caught problems before any code was written – a privacy issue, a broken build, a feature that would have deleted the wrong files.
Rules in a file. The repo has a CLAUDE.md with rules the agent must always follow. Some were learned the hard way – for example, never touch items in the real Recycle Bin that the app didn't put there.
I test everything myself. Every release I install, click through and try to break. The AI is fast, but it doesn't use the app.
The hard parts
Some things were much harder than I expected:
Drag & drop between WebView2 and the rest of Windows. A web view doesn't naturally speak the Windows drag & drop language. This took several rounds.
Fast thumbnails for videos and PDFs without freezing the UI on big folders.
Admin rights for protected folders. Copying into C:\Program Files needs elevation, but running the whole app as admin is a bad idea. Dirwise uses the Windows file operation API so only that one operation asks for permission.
Acrylic transparency on Windows 11 – which, it turned out, was broken on my own PC by a desktop customization mod, not by my code. That one cost me a whole evening.
Getting rejected by the Microsoft Store (twice)
The app was originally called Finder-Win. You can probably guess what happened.
The Store rejected the update for two reasons:
The name contained another company's product name.
The app looked like it belonged on a Mac – colored window buttons on the top left.
Fair enough. Version 1.6.0 got a new name (Dirwise), proper Windows 11 window buttons with Snap Layouts, and a cleanup of everything that borrowed from another platform. The second rejection was just an old image left in the listing. Third try: approved.
Lesson: if you're inspired by another platform, take the ideas, not the look or the name.
What I'd tell anyone building with AI
Be the product owner. Decide what to build and what "done" means. The AI is great at how, you need to own what and why.
Make it show its work. Plans, test results, screenshots. Trust, but verify.
Keep the scope small per step. Small phases mean small mistakes.
Be open about it. The code is public, the README says how it was built, and I'd rather get honest code review than pretend.
Try it / help out
Microsoft Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9MZ67726S65X
Website: https://krystof2-ops.github.io/dirwise/
GitHub: https://github.com/krystof2-ops/dirwise
Suggest and vote on features: https://krystof2-ops.github.io/dirwise/ideas/
There are a few good first issues for Hacktoberfest – a German translation, Rust unit tests and some UI work. Code reviews from real Rust developers are especially welcome. 🙂
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