SlothSort 🦥 — Let Local AI Organize Your Files

Meet SlothSort — a local-first AI file organizer that takes the boring work out of managing a cluttered Downloads folder.

Instead of manually opening files, renaming them, and deciding where they belong, simply upload your documents and let SlothSort suggest meaningful filenames, categories, and summaries.

It supports documents, invoices, certificates, notes, spreadsheets, code files, and more.

The best part? You stay in control. Review the AI's suggestions, edit them if needed, and approve files before they move into your organized library. Made a mistake? Undo the move.

The goal is simple: spend less time organizing files and more time doing what matters.

When a file is uploaded, SlothSort extracts available text, sends the relevant content to the local model, and receives a suggested filename, category, and summary. The user can review the result before the file is moved.

If Ollama is unavailable, the application has a basic rule-based fallback so the workflow can still be tested.

Files can contain personal information, financial details, academic certificates, and work documents. Uploading all of them to a third-party AI service is not always desirable.

That's why I wanted to explore a local-first approach.

With Ollama and an open-weight model, SlothSort can analyze files on the user's own machine instead of relying on a hosted AI API.

Open innovation makes three things possible:

There is still a cost in hardware and electricity, and local models can make mistakes. That's why SlothSort includes a review-before-moving workflow instead of blindly trusting every prediction.

For me, open-source AI is not just about using a different model. It's about giving people more control over where their data goes and how their tools work.

Think about the files that accumulate in your Downloads folder: invoices, certificates, notes, screenshots, and documents with names like final_v2_revised.pdf.

Each file takes only a few seconds to organize, but the repeated effort adds up.

SlothSort aims to reduce that repetitive work by generating suggestions automatically and letting users approve them in batches of small, manageable actions.

I haven't measured a reliable time-saving figure yet, so I won't claim a specific number. That's something I'd like to benchmark as the project develops.