What is FilDOS?
FilDOS is a keyboard-first, AI-native file browser built on Electron. It replaces Finder and Explorer with a fast, programmer-friendly interface — then adds a layer of on-device AI that lets you find files by meaning, not just name.File Management
Copy, move, rename, duplicate, and trash files with full undo support and live
filesystem watching.
Tags
Colour-coded tags that follow files through renames and moves, with a tag-files
view and sidebar integration.
AI Search
On-device semantic search powered by sentence-transformer embeddings — no data
leaves your machine.
Recents
A persistent recents list that survives across sessions and updates automatically
as files move.
Design principles
Offline-first. Every feature works without a network connection. AI embeddings run entirely on-device via WASM — no API keys, no telemetry. Fast by default. The file list is virtualised, thumbnails are cached, and the background indexer yields between files so the UI never stutters. Secure by construction. The renderer process runs in a sandboxedcontextIsolation
environment. It never touches the disk directly — every operation goes through a typed
IPC contract.
Result-typed IPC. Every filesystem call returns
{ ok: true; data: T } | { ok: false; error: { code, message } }. Expected failures
(permission denied, file not found) surface as friendly toasts, never uncaught exceptions.
Technology
| Layer | Tech |
|---|---|
| Shell | Electron 35+ |
| Renderer | React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind v4 |
| Build | electron-vite, Vite |
| Database | node:sqlite (built-in) + Drizzle ORM |
| AI embeddings | @huggingface/transformers on WASM |
| Tests | Vitest (unit + integration), Playwright (e2e) |