Dry-run and --apply

Every Sift command that can change the filesystem — organize, clean, folders — runs as a dry-run by default:

no --apply
→ no filesystem mutation

Running the bare command only builds and prints a plan. Nothing moves, nothing gets trashed, and nothing is created.

sift organize ~/Downloads        # preview only
sift organize ~/Downloads --apply # actually move files

The same shape applies to clean and folders:

sift clean ~/Downloads
sift clean ~/Downloads --apply

sift folders ~/Downloads
sift folders ~/Downloads --apply

Why this matters

• You can inspect a plan before committing to it, on directories you don’t fully trust or haven’t looked at in a while.
• Scripts and CI can safely call the dry-run form to check what Sift would do, without any risk of it doing it.
• It removes an entire class of “I didn’t expect that to move” surprises: if a command didn’t print Applied successfully, nothing happened.

Read-only commands

Some commands are read-only regardless of flags — there’s no --apply for them because they never mutate:

• sift scan
• sift doctor
• sift explain
• sift config check
• sift history

sift undo and sift init do mutate (that’s their entire purpose), but each has its own explicit confirmation shape rather than a dry-run/--apply pair — see History and Undo.

Next

Safety Model covers everything else that has to hold true even after you do pass --apply.