Date

[organize]
strategy = "date"
template = "{year}/{month}"

Source

Reads the file’s filesystem modification time (mtime) via no-follow metadata — never the file’s own internal metadata. date_source = "modified" is the only supported value today, and can be omitted (it’s the default).

Placeholders

{year}
{month}
{day}

Each renders as fixed-width digits ({year} → 4 digits, {month}/{day} → 2 digits). That fixed width is what lets recursive organize safely recognize a folder it already generated (2026/09/) and avoid nesting into it again on a second run — see Recursive Organization.

Recursion

date fully supports --recursive, same as type — the only two strategies that do.

Related

• .sift.toml — the template field in context with the rest of the file.
• Audio, Video, Photos, Documents — free-text metadata strategies, which don’t support --recursive for exactly the reason above (their values aren’t fixed-width).