01 · Bulk rename and file triage
At a glance
| Solves | A folder of chaotically named images, contracts, receipts or documents you want renamed to something findable |
| Needs | A folder of files; the office document suite if reading PDF or Word content |
| Takes | Minutes for a few files; longer for a hundred identified by content |
| Risk | High — it really changes your files |
The situation
Finance hands you a folder with 80 receipts named IMG_20260312_143022.jpg, scan(3).pdf and wechat_image_20260401.png. You want them to look like 2026-03-12_travel_didi_186yuan.pdf — something you can search.
Doing 80 by hand takes over an hour, and you start making mistakes around number 40.
Preparation
Use copies
Bulk renaming is irreversible. The system takes an automatic backup before modification, but that is a safety net, not your backup plan.
Copy the folder and work on the copy. Once it works, decide whether to touch the originals.
- Make a folder, e.g.
receipts-copy - Copy the files in
- Set it as the workspace, or drag the files into the conversation
- Confirm you are on default permissions
Supported files: common documents (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint), images, text, and anything with readable text or timestamps. Naming can be based on content, or on creation/modification time and the original title.
The prompt
Round one: preview only
Read every file in the workspace and rename them in bulk following
"date + category + party + amount".
Rules:
- Date as YYYY-MM-DD, read from file content where possible, otherwise from
the file creation time — and note which in the basis column
- Category from: travel / meals / office / other
- Party is the issuing organisation, abbreviated
- Amount as a whole number with the currency
- Keep the extension unchanged
Show me a preview first and execute only after I confirm.
Present it as a table with three columns: original name / new name / basis.
Do not modify any file yet.Check the preview
Read every row, looking for four things:
- Duplicate names — two receipts from the same day and vendor collide easily
- Where the date came from — that is what the basis column is for
- Missing files — count the rows
- Wrong amounts — spot-check two or three against the originals
Round two: execute
The table is correct, execute the rename.
When done, tell me how many were renamed, how many were skipped, and why.If the preview is wrong
Do not rewrite the requirement — name the difference:
Two problems.
Rows 12 and 27 produce the same name — same day, same vendor, two receipts.
Add _1 _2 suffixes to duplicates, ordered by amount ascending.
Row 5 has the wrong date: that is the scan date, not the issue date. The issue
date is at the top right of the receipt. Redo that category.Why it is written that way
"Preview first, execute after I confirm" is the whole playbook. Without it you discover the rule was misunderstood after everything has been renamed.
Asking for a "basis" column. The most commonly omitted and most valuable column. It exposes where the model got each date, letting you judge whether that name is trustworthy.
The rules are very specific. Date format, category list, amount unit, extension handling — each one is a potential ambiguity. Leave it out and it invents a convention, differently each time.
"Do not modify any file yet" is belt and braces. The earlier sentence already said confirm first, but one more line is free.
Asking for a report of skipped files. System directories, encrypted files and files held by other programs are skipped automatically — that is protection working. But you need to know which, or you will assume everything was done.
Acceptance checklist
- [ ] Nothing was modified during the preview stage
- [ ] The number of rows matches the number of files in the folder
- [ ] No duplicate names
- [ ] Spot-check three rows against the originals
- [ ] File count after execution is unchanged (nothing lost)
- [ ] The Changes view matches the comparison table
- [ ] It reported skipped files and reasons
Variations
File by content
Read every file in this folder, judge its type by content, and move it into
the matching subfolder: contracts / receipts / reports / images / other.
Create subfolders that do not exist. List the moves for me to confirm and do
not move anything yet. Flag the basis for each classification.File by date
Sort the images in this folder into YYYY-MM subfolders by capture date.
Read EXIF first; for files without EXIF, use the creation time and list those
separately for me to confirm. Preview first.Only part of the folder
Only handle files whose names start with "wechat_image"; leave the rest alone.
Apply the rules above and show me the comparison table first.Generate an index
Worth adding afterwards, and useful for a long time:
Create index.md in this folder with a table listing: new name / date /
category / party / amount / original name.
Sorted newest first. This is for looking things up and cross-checking later.FAQ
It cannot read the content of a PDF.
Two possibilities: the current model does not support that file type, or you have no document Skill installed.
Try a model that takes image input first; failing that, install the pdf Skill from the office document suite. Scanned documents also need OCR, which the pdf Skill covers.
There are lots of files and it stopped partway.
Test on a small batch (10–20) to confirm the rule, then scale up. Large batches run for a long time — keep the machine online after submitting.
The rule was wrong. Can I undo it?
The Security Centre's automatic backup snapshots existing files before modification; you can open the backup directory to look. But renaming and content modification are not quite the same thing — the reliable answer remains work on a copy.
Also, if you asked for the comparison table with a basis column, that table is an old-to-new mapping, and you can have it reverse the rename from it.
Can it tidy my desktop?
Technically yes, but do not. The desktop is a mixed directory with system files, shortcuts and files currently in use. The official FAQ has an entry for "files missing after tidying the desktop".
Do this instead: move what you want tidied into its own folder first.