Overview

Sift Watch turns selected folders into continuously organized inboxes.

invoice.pdf appears
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wait until stable
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evaluate policy
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Documents/invoice.pdf

Explicit, persistent authorization

Automatic mutation requires an explicit, persistent flag when the watch is registered:

sift watch add ~/Inbox --auto-apply

There’s no way to have Watch mutate a folder without having passed --auto-apply at registration time.

Pre-existing files are never backfilled

Starting a watch never touches files that already existed before it started — Watch only ever reacts to filesystem events from that point forward.

sift organize ~/Inbox --apply   # organize what's already there, once
sift watch start ~/Inbox        # then watch for new arrivals

Live config

A running watch resolves its .sift.toml the same way manual organize does, and hot-reloads it — see Configuration Lookup and Lifecycle Guarantees for exactly what happens when the file changes while the watch is running.

Pages in this section

• Register and Start — the add → stopped → start → running flow.
• Pause, Resume and Stop — the rest of the lifecycle.
• Stability Window — why Watch waits before organizing a new file.
• Recursive Watch — the same boundaries as recursive organize, applied continuously.
• Lifecycle Guarantees — what each transition confirms before returning.

The desktop companion

The optional Tray App manages watched folders visually, without a terminal.