This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine
👻 SlothGhost: The Ghosts Hiding in Your Files
What I Built
I built SlothTab, a local-first AI assistant that finds the forgotten things hiding on your computer.
Over time, our laptops accumulate thousands of files:
- old projects
- forgotten screenshots
- university notes
- unfinished ideas
- random documents
- old photos
- abandoned code
- files we haven't opened in years
Most of them aren't really gone.
They're just... forgotten.
That's where the idea for SlothTab came from.
I wanted to build an AI that could explore this digital clutter and bring the interesting pieces back to the surface.
Instead of asking:
"What files do I have?"
SlothTab asks:
"What have I forgotten?"
The AI scans a user-selected collection of files locally and creates connections between them.
It can:
- 👻 Find forgotten files
- 🧠 Understand document contents
- 🔗 Discover connections between files
- 📂 Group related projects and notes
- 📝 Summarize old documents
- 🔍 Find duplicates
- 💡 Resurface unfinished ideas
- 🕰️ Highlight files that haven't been opened in a long time
- 🔒 Keep the entire process local
The goal isn't to delete the digital clutter.
It's to give the forgotten parts of it a second life.
Demo
The demo starts with a folder containing a collection of old files.
SlothTab scans them locally and creates a Ghost Report.
For example:
👻 GHOST REPORT
I found something you might have forgotten.
────────────────────────────
📁 Project: "AI Study Assistant"
Last modified:
March 2025
Related files:
• project-notes.md
• architecture.png
• research.pdf
• prototype.py
Status:
⚠ Seems unfinished
────────────────────────────
📝 What I found:
You started building an AI study assistant
but never completed the prototype.
The project contains an architecture diagram,
research notes, and an unfinished Python file.
────────────────────────────
👻 Maybe this one deserves another look.
That's the moment I wanted SlothTab to create.
Not:
"Here are 47 files."
But:
"Hey... remember this?"
Code
💻 GitHub:https://github.com/neomon-dev/SlothTab.git
SlothTab is open-source and designed around local AI.
The AI provider is abstracted so users can run different open-weight models through local inference.
The project can work with:
- LM Studio
- Ollama
- OpenAI-compatible local endpoints
The goal is to make the AI layer replaceable rather than locking the application to one provider.
How I Built It
SlothTab is built around a local-first AI pipeline.
The architecture looks roughly like this:
👻 SlothTab
│
▼
Local Files
│
▼
Document Processing
│
┌─────────┴─────────┐
▼ ▼
Text Files Images
│ │
└─────────┬─────────┘
▼
Local AI
│
▼
Structured Analysis
│
┌─────────┼─────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
Summaries Connections Insights
│ │ │
└─────────┴─────────┘
▼
Ghost Report
The frontend is built with React + TypeScript, with a Python/FastAPI backend and SQLite for local persistence.
For documents, SlothTab extracts information locally before passing relevant content to the configured local model.
The AI isn't given direct control over the filesystem.
Instead, it produces structured information that the application validates before doing anything with it.
For example:
{
"title": "AI Study Assistant",
"confidence": 0.91,
"last_modified": "2025-03-12",
"related_files": [
"project-notes.md",
"architecture.png",
"prototype.py"
],
"status": "unfinished",
"summary": "An unfinished AI study assistant prototype.",
"insight": "The project appears to have been abandoned before implementation was completed."
}
This makes the AI useful without giving it uncontrolled access to the user's machine.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
This project is particularly interesting as a local AI application because the files being analyzed can be deeply personal.
Old documents can contain:
- personal writing
- university work
- private projects
- photographs
- financial documents
- research
- unfinished ideas
I didn't want the basic premise of the application to be:
"Upload your entire digital history to a cloud AI."
Instead, SlothTab is designed around:
Your files
↓
Your computer
↓
Your local model
↓
Your insights
🔒 Privacy
The files can remain on the user's machine.
That's important when the AI is looking through years of personal data.
🌐 Offline AI
Once the model is installed, the core analysis can work without an internet connection.
The "ghosts" in your computer don't need to leave your computer to be understood.
🔄 Model freedom
SlothTab isn't tied to one AI provider.
Users can experiment with different open-weight models and choose the one that works best for their hardware.
🛠️ Customization
The AI's behavior can be changed.
Users can modify:
- prompts
- analysis rules
- categories
- similarity thresholds
- what counts as "forgotten"
- how insights are generated
That level of control is one of the things I find most interesting about open AI.
My Agent Session
[Add your DevRelay agent session here.]
I used an AI coding agent during development to help with implementation, debugging, architecture, and iteration.
The interesting part wasn't just getting the application to work.
It was being able to iterate on the entire idea—from a simple local file organizer into something that could actually understand the history hiding inside a computer.
The Spirit of It
The first time I saw an old project resurface, the experience was surprisingly different from a normal AI interaction.
It wasn't:
"Here's something AI generated."
It was:
"Wait... I made this?"
That's the feeling I wanted SlothTab to capture.
Our computers are full of digital ghosts.
A folder from an old semester.
A half-finished project.
A screenshot of an idea that never became anything.
A document written at 2 AM that we completely forgot about.
A repository that hasn't been touched since we thought we were going to build the next big thing.
They're still there.
They're just buried.
SlothTab gives those forgotten things a voice.
Not by pretending to know everything about you, but by finding patterns in the things you've already created and saying:
"You might want to look at this again."
And because the AI runs locally, those memories don't have to leave your machine to be rediscovered.
That's my interpretation of Ghost in the Machine:
The ghost isn't inside the AI.
It's inside the machine already.
SlothTab just helps you find it. 👻
Prize Categories
[Add the applicable partner categories here.]
👻 Final Thought
I started this project thinking about AI as something that creates new things.
SlothTab explores the opposite idea:
What if AI could help us rediscover the things we've already created?
Sometimes the most interesting thing on your computer isn't something new.
It's something old that you've forgotten.
And maybe it's time to open that folder again.
The ghosts have been waiting.
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