Sortique

Most tidy-up apps show you a flat list and a guess. Sortique groups your loose files into clusters you actually think about: the zip you already extracted, a wall of screenshots, the documents that matter. It proposes what to do with each one and shows you the reason behind every call. You decide. Nothing leaves your Mac.

What it does

• Clusters, not lists

  A zip and the folder you extracted from it are one decision, not two. Twenty download folders are one group. A wall of screenshots is sorted by what is in them. You handle a cluster at a time.

• Evidence before guessing

  Sortique gathers real signals first: where a file came from, its metadata, whether it was unzipped, how it matches your existing folders. Cheap checks run before anything expensive.

• Always shows its reasoning

  Every proposal comes with a plain-English reason and a confidence score, right there in the inspector. You never wonder why a file is going somewhere.

• Decide at any altitude

  Approve a whole cluster in one click, or drill in and override a single file. Folders are handled as units, however deep they run.

• Every override teaches

  Reroute or bin a file and Sortique offers to remember it. Because it reasons from evidence, a rule can be semantic ("images that look like hieroglyphs go here"), not just a filename pattern.

• Reads inside images

  A local vision model describes screenshots whose names tell you nothing, so a folder full of "net-err-name-not-resolved.png" gets grouped by what each one actually shows.

• Important documents protected

  Passports, contracts, agreements and tax records are flagged warm-red, never pre-checked, and never eligible for anything automatic. The eye catches them before the hand does.

• Your folders, your rules

  Watch any folders you like, not just Desktop and Downloads, and point the destination wherever you keep things. Change them any time and the next run honours it. Source repos, node_modules and Xcode projects stay invisible.

• Trash always asks

  No file is ever auto-binned, whatever the confidence. Sortique only ever moves things to the Trash, never deletes outright, and gives you 30 seconds to undo any batch.

Where it stands

In development.

Safety rules

Sortique moves and bins your files. A single bug here would break trust, so the rules are strict.

Never deletes

Files only ever move to the Trash. Sortique cannot delete outright, even if it tried. Your Trash is the floor.

Bundle aware

.app, .pages, .scrivx and friends are atomic. They move as a unit, never recursed into.

Open files skipped

Anything with an open file handle, or freshly created, is left alone until the next pass.

Excluded folders stay excluded

Once a folder is excluded, it is neither a source nor a destination.

Privacy

Every model runs on your Mac through Apple's MLX framework. No cloud, no Docker, no telemetry. The only outbound traffic is the Sparkle update check and the one-time model download.

Requirements

• macOS 26.0 (Tahoe) or later
• Apple Silicon (the on-device models need it)
• Full Disk Access, so it can file into any folder you choose
• Around 8 GB free for the on-device AI models (downloaded after install)

How it works

1. Gather evidence

   For every loose file, Sortique collects where it came from, its metadata, and how it relates to the folders you already keep. Source repos and the like are excluded up front.

2. Group and reason

   Files are sorted into clusters, then a local model proposes a destination, or the Trash, for each one and writes down why. Low-confidence calls land in an "unsure" pile rather than guessing.

3. Review and apply

   Skim cluster by cluster, override anything off-target, then apply. A 30-second undo follows every batch, and what you change is remembered for next time.

Coming soon

Sortique is in development. Want to know when it is ready, or help test the early builds? Get in touch.