Filer Usecase
An Index That Never Goes Stale
A Filer folder agent notices when a file is added or changed and rewrites the folder's own INDEX.md to match — nobody has to remember to update it.
- File event
- Chat
- Right-click
What you get
A folder that keeps accumulating files — drafts, exports, handoffs — is only as useful as your memory of what's in it. A hand-written index is a good idea for about a week, then it's one file behind, then it's not trusted at all.
Point a Filer folder at itself instead. Its agent wakes up on every file change, looks at what's actually there, and rewrites INDEX.md from scratch — so the index describes the folder as it is right now, not as it was when someone last remembered to update it.
How to do it
Screenshots below are from an actual run against a live Filer instance, using placeholder notes in place of real documents.
Needs: a trust level that allows the agent to create and edit files in the folder. No plugin required.
What it needs
- A Filer folder with a trust level that allows file-triggered runs and letting the agent create/edit files
- No plugin for the trigger path — this one runs on Filer's own built-in file tools. The one-shot right-click version needs the Folder Tools plugin instead (install from Connect)
- An inference endpoint — Local AI, Frontier AI (API key), or a local LLM server
Tip: if you want every file type covered, say so explicitly in the folder's instructions ("any file," not just "a file") — a vague instruction can compile into a narrower trigger than you meant.
A folder with a few files, no index yet
A short instructions file already in place tells the agent what to do whenever a file shows up: look at the folder's current contents and write a short description of each one into INDEX.md, overwriting it each time rather than appending.
A new file lands, the index rewrites itself
Adding a file is the trigger — no one has to ask. The agent lists the folder again, reads what's new, and writes a fresh INDEX.md covering every file that's actually there.
What INDEX.md actually says - budget-notes.md: Q4 budget review meeting notes - budget-review.md: Follow-up notes on Q4 budget review meeting - meeting-notes.md: Meeting notes for upcoming sessions - report-draft.md: Draft report content
Verified
This isn't a mockup — the screenshots above are from one real run: a real file landing in the folder really woke the agent, it really re-listed the folder's contents, and the INDEX.md it wrote really covers every real file there — confirmed by reading the file back off disk, not just from the agent's own report. Describing each file in a line is regular language-model reasoning; what's actually being verified here is that the folder notices a change and keeps its own index in sync with no one asking twice.
Where else this applies
The mechanism is generic — watch a folder, look at what's actually in it, write a description that matches. Any folder that accumulates files nobody re-reads to summarize is a fit, not just a notes folder:
- Downloads folder — an always-current list of what actually landed there, instead of scrolling filenames to figure out what's new.
- A shared drop folder — several people adding files to the same place, one file that tells everyone what's actually there right now.
- A project archive — versioned exports piling up over months, kept legible without anyone maintaining an index by hand.
- On a schedule instead — a folder that changes too often to trigger on every single event can instead regenerate INDEX.md once a day on a schedule, the same read-and-write sequence just run on a timer rather than on a file change.
- Notify instead of only writing — connect the same folder's Telegram or Slack plugin and have the agent send a short "index updated, N new files" message alongside rewriting INDEX.md, the same notify pattern the scheduled-report and doc-diff-notify cases already use.
Other ways in
- Right-click
- There's also a one-shot right-click path that doesn't need any of the setup above: the bundled Folder Tools plugin's Generate Index action builds the same kind of index for a folder you select, once, with no trigger and no standing agent — useful for a folder you don't want to turn into a full Working Agent for.
- Chat
- The walkthrough above shows the trigger path — a file lands, the agent notices on its own, nobody asks. The same rewrite is one chat message away too: open the folder's chat and ask something like "What's in this folder right now?" or say "regenerate INDEX.md," and the agent runs the identical list-the-folder-and-describe-each-file sequence on demand instead of on a trigger.
- Other automation triggers
- Not shown in this walkthrough.
- Other integrations
- Not shown in this walkthrough.
More usecases
Come Back To an Answer, Not a Backlog
A Filer folder agent wakes up on its own schedule, reads what piled up while you were away, and sends you the digest — before you've even opened the app.
- Schedule
- Chat
Know What Changed, Without Reading It Twice
A Filer folder agent notices the moment a new contract or policy version lands, diffs it against the one it replaces, and sends you what actually changed.
- File event
- Chat