Quick Start

Get your first folder organized with Sorty in under 5 minutes

Quick Start Guide

This guide will walk you through organizing your first folder with Sorty. You’ll learn the core workflow, preview AI-suggested organization, and apply changes safely.

This guide assumes you’ve already installed Sorty and configured an AI provider. If you haven’t, complete those steps first.

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Your First Organization

Let’s organize a folder in 5 simple steps.

1. Select a folder to organize

   Open Sorty and select a folder to organize:

   • Press ⌘O (or click “Open Directory”)
   • Choose a folder (we recommend starting with Downloads or Desktop)
   • The folder path will appear in the main view

   Or drag and drop a folder directly onto the Sorty window.

   Start with a folder that has 20-50 files for the best first experience. Very large folders (500+ files) may take longer to process.

2. Choose a persona (optional)

   Personas customize the AI’s organization logic for different workflows:

   • General: Standard categories (Documents, Media, Archives)
   • Developer: Groups by project, language, and tech stack
   • Photographer: Organizes by shoots, dates, camera metadata
   • Student: Organizes by subject, course, semester

   Select a persona from the dropdown in Settings (⌘,), or leave it as General for now.

   You can change personas at any time. Each watched folder can also have its own persona.

3. Start organization

   Click the “Organize” button (or press ⌘R).

   Sorty will:

   1. Scan your folder and collect file metadata
   2. Analyze patterns using AI (naming conventions, file types, date patterns)
   3. Generate a proposed folder structure with categories
   4. Display a preview of the changes

   This typically takes 10-30 seconds depending on folder size and AI provider.

   If you enabled “Include Reasoning” in Settings, you’ll see detailed explanations for why files are grouped together.

4. Review and customize the preview

   The AI will present a hierarchical folder structure. For each suggested folder:

   • Expand folders to see which files will be moved
   • Edit folder names by clicking on them
   • Remove files from suggestions if you disagree
   • Read reasoning to understand the AI’s decision-making

   You can also provide additional instructions at this stage:

   • “Keep all 2024 files together”
   • “Create a separate folder for invoices”
   • “Use lowercase folder names”

   Files protected by exclusion rules won’t appear in the preview. Check Settings → Exclusion Rules to see what’s protected.

5. Apply changes

   When you’re satisfied with the preview, click “Apply Changes” (or press ⌘⏎).

   Sorty will:

   • Create the new folder structure
   • Move files into their designated folders
   • Apply Finder tags (if enabled)
   • Record the operation in History

   Don’t worry—you can always undo! Press ⌘Z immediately after applying, or go to History (⇧⌘H) and click “Revert” on any past session.

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Understanding the Preview

The preview shows you exactly what will happen before any files are moved.

Folder Structure

The AI organizes files into a hierarchical structure:

Documents/
├── Work/
│   ├── Q1_2024_Reports/
│   └── Client_Presentations/
├── Personal/
│   ├── Receipts/
│   └── Tax_Documents/
└── Projects/
    ├── Website_Redesign/
    └── Mobile_App/

Each folder includes:

• File count: Number of files that will be moved
• Reasoning (if enabled): Why the AI grouped these files
• Tags: Finder tags that will be applied

Customizing the Organization

You have several options to tweak the AI’s suggestions:

Action	How to Do It
Rename a folder	Click the folder name and edit inline
Remove a file	Click the X next to the file name
Provide additional instructions	Type in the “Custom Instructions” field and click “Regenerate”
Change temperature	Adjust in Settings to make the AI more predictable (low) or creative (high)
Re-run analysis	Press ⇧⌘R to regenerate with current settings

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Advanced Features

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, explore these powerful features.

Custom Instructions

Before organizing, you can provide specific guidance:

• “Group all 2024 files together”
• “Organize by client name”
• “Keep design files separate from code”
• “Create a folder for each project”

Enter instructions in the text field before clicking “Organize”.

Deep Scan

Enable Deep Scan in Settings for content-aware organization:

• PDF text extraction: Reads document content
• Image EXIF metadata: Analyzes camera, date, location
• Document titles and keywords: Extracts semantic information
• Audio/video metadata: Reads artist, album, duration

Deep Scan is more accurate but slower and may use more API credits. File contents are analyzed locally—only metadata summaries are sent to the AI.

File Tagging

Enable File Tagging in Settings to apply Finder-compatible tags:

• Tags like “Invoice”, “Personal”, “Important”, “Archive”
• Searchable in Spotlight and Finder
• Color-coded for visual organization

Temperature Control

Adjust the AI’s creativity in Settings:

• Low (0.0-0.3): Predictable, strict categorization
• Medium (0.4-0.6): Balanced approach (recommended)
• High (0.7-1.0): Creative groupings, may find novel patterns

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Using The Learnings

The Learnings is a passive learning system that builds a personalized understanding of your organization preferences.

1. Enable Learning

   Navigate to The Learnings (⇧⌘L) and grant consent.

2. Authenticate

   Set up Touch ID / Face ID / Passcode protection for your data. This is required for security—your learning data is encrypted with AES-256.

3. Use the app normally

   Organize files, provide feedback, and make corrections. The system observes:

   • Steering prompts: Post-organization feedback
   • Honing answers: Explicit preferences from Q&A sessions
   • Guiding instructions: Instructions you provide before organizing
   • Manual corrections: Files you move after AI organization
   • Reverts: Organization sessions you undo
4. Refine preferences

   After completing an organization, click “Refine Preferences” to answer 3-5 AI-generated questions about your organization philosophy.

   Example questions:

   • “When you finish a project, what is your preferred archival strategy?”
   • “How do you prefer to organize documents by date?”

   Your answers become high-priority preferences for future organizations.

The Learnings uses temporal weighting—recent behavior is weighted more heavily than older patterns. This means the AI adapts as your preferences evolve.

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Setting Up Watched Folders

Watched folders enable automatic background monitoring for folders like Downloads.

1. Add a watched folder

   1. Navigate to Watched Folders (⌘5)
   2. Click Add Folder
   3. Select a directory to monitor (e.g., /Users/you/Downloads)
2. Configure per-folder settings

   Each watched folder can have:

   • Its own persona (e.g., Developer for your code folder)
   • Smart Drop mode: Only organize new files dropped into the folder root
   • Custom enable/disable state
3. Calibrate (optional)

   Run “Calibrate” to perform a one-time full organization. This establishes the baseline folder structure that Smart Drop will use going forward.

Auto-Organize requires a valid AI provider configuration in Settings. The feature will remain grayed out until you configure OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, or Apple Intelligence.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Master these shortcuts to work faster:

Shortcut	Action
⌘O	Open Directory
⌘R	Start Organization
⇧⌘R	Regenerate Organization
⌘⏎	Apply Changes
⌘Z	Undo (revert organization)
⌘,	Open Settings
⇧⌘L	Open The Learnings
⇧⌘H	Open History
⌘1-5	Navigate tabs (Organize, Health, Duplicates, Exclusions, Watched)

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Troubleshooting

AI Not Responding

• ✓ Check your internet connection
• ✓ Verify your API Key is correct in Settings
• ✓ Ensure the API URL is correct for your provider
• ✓ For Ollama: ensure the server is running (ollama serve)

Files Not Moving

• ✓ Check Exclusion Rules to ensure files aren’t protected
• ✓ Verify you have write permissions for the directory
• ✓ Ensure the source files still exist

Slow Organization

• ✓ Disable Deep Scan for faster processing
• ✓ Reduce the number of files by using exclusions
• ✓ Enable Streaming for responsive feedback
• ✓ Consider using a faster AI model

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Next Steps

Now that you’ve organized your first folder, explore more features:

Custom Personas

Create specialized AI profiles for different workflows

Duplicate Detection

Find and safely remove duplicate files

Workspace Health

Monitor directory health with actionable insights

CLI Tools

Control Sorty from the command line