SlothSort: An AI Folder Tidier That Does the Work While You Do Nothing (Local Gemma)

A developer built SlothSort, an open-source tool that uses Gemma 3 (4B) running locally via Ollama to suggest folders and cleaned-up filenames for a messy directory, then moves files only after the user reviews and approves a checkbox preview. In a test on 23 files, the local model took about three minutes to generate a plan on a laptop without a GPU, and the user spent roughly 40 seconds reviewing it before the moves completed in under a second; the tool never deletes or overwrites files and offers a one-click Undo. The developer reported the model misclassified a boarding pass PDF into an Invoices folder and couldn't identify photos from filenames alone, and said the approach pays off most on folders with hundreds of files.

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week3-2026-10-19 SlothSort tidies a messy folder so you don't have to. Everyone has a Downloads folder full of files like IMG 20251003 184512.jpg , download 3 .zip and final FINAL v3.docx . Sorting them is a chore that never gets done. With SlothSort, you type the folder path and press one button. It reads each file's name and the first few lines of text files and suggests a folder and a clean name for each one. You look over the list, untick anything you want left alone, and press Tidy it up . It's built for anyone who keeps putting off tidying their files. It never deletes anything, never overwrites a file, and has an Undo button for the last tidy-up. Lazy file tidier: Gemma running locally in Ollama suggests folders and clean names for a messy folder. You review, press one button, and it moves files. Nothing is deleted, and the last tidy-up can be undone. Run: pip install -r requirements.txt && python -m uvicorn app:app --port 8003 open http://127.0.0.1:8003 http://127.0.0.1:8003 I built the project with AI assistance Claude and ran it on my own Ubuntu laptop. I tested SlothSort on a folder of 23 messy files: photos named IMG 2025... , PDFs like Invoice-4821 1 .pdf , a few zips, and ten text files with notes, a grocery list and a CSV of expenses. By hand: I sorted them into folders and gave them proper names. It took me 11 minutes, and I gave up on renaming the last few. With SlothSort: I typed the folder path and pressed one button. Gemma 3 4B on my laptop, with no graphics card, took about 3 minutes to read the files and suggest a plan. I spent roughly 40 seconds looking over the list and unticking two files, then pressed Tidy it up. The move itself took under a second. I did other things while it thought, so the time I actually spent was under a minute. What it got right: It made sensible folders like Invoices, Photos and Notes, and it turned the text files into good names. The note starting "Meeting notes 12 Oct 2026" became meeting-notes-2026-10-12.txt . What it got wrong: It put boarding-pass-CCU-DEL.pdf in Invoices instead of a travel folder. Because it only sees the file names for photos and PDFs, it also couldn't tell what the two photos were. That's why the list is a preview with checkboxes, not an automatic move. The Undo button put everything back in one click. Verdict: For a folder this size the saving is small, but a Downloads folder with hundreds of files is where this gets worth it. I'd like to add a "read the first page of each PDF" step next.