ShadowFS
Reorganise your files without touching them.
A read-only shadow layer over your real files: virtual folders, virtual names and natural-language search. The files themselves never move.
Free during launch Every build on this site is free during the launch period. Paid editions and App Store listings come later; nothing here needs an account or a key.
macOS arm64 Early access Read-only by design Tools v0.1.0
Screenshot pending
Early-access UI capture pending; the three contracts are the product.
The build is real; the picture will follow.
01What's inside
The specifics, with numbers.
The things a general-purpose tool does not do.
01
C1 — the real file system is read-only
No code path deletes, renames or moves a real file. The shadow is a view; if the view is wrong, nothing is lost.
02
C2 — the view is yours
Naming proposals are immutable; once accepted, a view is user-owned, and a name you edited yourself is marked manual and never overwritten.
03
C3 — offline, and honest
With no model installed it falls back to FTS5 and deterministic hash vectors, and the status page says 'degraded, no model' out loud.
04
Search by description
Natural-language search over the shadow layer, in a local web UI on 127.0.0.1:8765.
05
Early access, labelled
P0 through P2 are implemented and tested locally; P3 — projection into the system file manager — has not started.
06
One 106 MB arm64 build
Python, local only, no server. Free during launch.
02Gallery
A closer look.
Real screenshots where they exist. Where a capture is missing, the frame says so.
Screenshot pending
Virtual folder tree.
The build is real; the picture will follow.
Screenshot pending
Naming proposal review.
The build is real; the picture will follow.
Screenshot pending
Status page, including the degraded state.
The build is real; the picture will follow.
03Get it
Download the build.
Everything is free during launch — the same binaries the studio tests. No account, no key.
Free during launch Every build on this site is free during the launch period. Paid editions and App Store listings come later; nothing here needs an account or a key.
macOS v0.1.0
ShadowFS-0.1.0-macos-arm64.zip
105.8 MB — over the Pages limit, held for R2. Early access.
Download · coming soon Download for macOS Request the buildSigning and sideload notes are on each build. iOS builds are unsigned; macOS builds marked ad-hoc are not notarised.
Artifacts over the Pages file limit stay pending until the binary bucket is live. Ask and we will send those directly.
Early access
P0 through P2 are implemented and tested locally; P3 — projection into the system file manager — has not started. It is here because it is useful now, not because it is finished.
04More from the bench
Keep looking around.
Other tools from the same bench, built to the same rules.