Migrating the mess

Nobody starts from zero. You are going to have a Downloads folder with six hundred files, a scattered Desktop, and three folders called "stuff".

Reorganizing that by hand is a lost afternoon, which is why it never gets done.

The move is this one, in three steps and without rushing.

The CLAUDE.md is what turns this into a system instead of a spring clean.

Tidying once is an afternoon. Writing the rule is ten minutes and tidies forever.

And how do I keep track of changes? Once the work lives in files, a new need shows up: trying something without losing what you already had.

The homemade answer is to duplicate the file and add _v2. It works three times; by the fourth you no longer know which one was good.

The good answer is called version control: instead of copies, the program saves snapshots of the folder's complete state, each with a message from you explaining what you did.

And here the argument closes: that works beautifully with text and rather badly with binaries. With text it tells you "you changed this line". With a binary it can only say "it changed", and it stores a whole copy of the file in every snapshot — so the folder swells fast.