Why I’m building FolderNode

I design and build websites for a living. I also take photos and occasionally shoot video.

That means files pile up every day: assets for a project, photos and videos from a shoot, exported files. They all need organizing, converting for different uses, or compressing to make them smaller.

None of these tasks is unusual. But the more I create, the more time they take up. I had been finding it tedious for a long time and kept wondering if it could be easier.

I started building FolderNode to solve that everyday problem for myself.

I considered letting AI organize the files for me. But I didn’t want to spend tokens every time I managed my files, or have to think about how much I was using. That wasn’t how I wanted an everyday tool to work.

I was also uneasy about handing over important files. What if it misunderstood what I wanted and deleted something I still needed? I wanted less work, but I also wanted to know what would happen to my files. Feeling comfortable with the actions I was taking mattered to me.

I do use AI to help develop FolderNode. It has helped me with a lot of the work, and I’ve been building the app with that help, bit by bit.

But I didn’t want to treat whatever AI produced as the finished product. A generic, obviously AI-generated interface packed with features wouldn’t be something I’d want to keep using.

Where should things go so you don’t have to hunt for them? What feedback makes an action easy to understand? Does an animation help, or does it get in the way?

I work through those details by using the app myself. I fix something that feels a little off, then try it again. I lean on AI where it helps, but I keep making the decisions about usability and how the app feels until I’m happy with them.

That has taken a lot of time. Even after something works, I keep finding details I could improve, so progress isn’t always straightforward. But this is a tool I use over and over in my own work. Those details are worth spending time on.

FolderNode started with my own frustration. I hope it can also help other people who find organizing, converting, and compressing files just as tedious.

If you try it, I’d love to hear what works well and what feels awkward. Learning how it fits into your actual work helps me decide what to improve next.

And if you enjoy using FolderNode and would like to support its continued development, I’d really appreciate it.

I’ll keep using it myself and refining it along the way. I want to make something we’ll want to use for a long time.