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FileCabinet Operations Guide

This guide covers day-to-day operations in FileCabinet, including importing files, editing metadata, running vault health audits, and automating tasks via the command line.

GUI vs. CLI Workflows​

FileCabinet provides both a visual Windows application (WPF) for desktop use and a console application (FileCabinet.Cli.exe) for automation, scripting, and headless environments.

1. Ingesting Files​

Drag and drop files or folders directly into the main drop zone.

  • Verify your Intake Mode (Move or Copy) in the drop zone header.
  • Alternatively, right-click any file in Windows Explorer and choose Copy to FileCabinet or Move to FileCabinet.

2. Searching​

Use the top search bar to query:

  • File names and extensions
  • Original paths
  • Custom tags and notes
  • Extracted text content (e.g. search for configuration keys inside stored .ini or .json files)

3. Star, Revert, and Actions​

The right-hand panel gives you direct operations:

  • Open Location: Show the stored file in Windows Explorer.
  • Restore Copy: Extract a copy to a folder of your choice without removing it from the vault.
  • Quarantine / Delete Forever: Manage the lifecycle of the file.

Background Pipelines​

When you ingest an item, FileCabinet triggers two local indexing tasks. These tasks operate on files stored within the vault and require no external network calls:

1. Text Extraction​

For text-based files (Markdown, JSON, XML, YAML, TOML, Python scripts, CSV, configuration files, and logs), FileCabinet reads the raw content, normalizes it, and saves an index file under extracted-text\yyyy\MM\.

  • Binary files (compiled DLLs, images) are skipped and marked as Not extractable.
  • If a text file fails to index (e.g., due to file encoding issues), it is marked as Extraction failed to ensure you can identify indexing gaps.

2. Thumbnail Generation​

For image files, FileCabinet generates a local .png thumbnail under thumbnails\yyyy\MM\ to power the catalog preview. Non-image formats show a format-aware fallback card in the UI.

Vault Health & Maintenance​

Over time, files can be moved, renamed, or corrupt on disk. FileCabinet includes a built-in diagnostic and self-healing system:

:::info Analyze vs. Fix

  • Analyze: Performs a read-only audit of the vault. It checks for:
    • Missing cataloged files on disk
    • File signature modifications (Hash Mismatches)
    • Missing thumbnails or missing extracted-text indexes
    • Duplicate candidate files (sharing the same SHA-256)
  • Apply Selected (Fix): Runs only safe automated repair actions, such as recomputing missing hashes, regenerating missing thumbnails, re-indexing text files, and rebinding stale absolute paths if the relative file is present. :::

All repairs and scans are logged line-by-line to the vault-local file catalog\repair-log.jsonl for auditability and recovery.