The Downloads folder is where files land, not where they live — but without a triage habit it becomes the household junk drawer: installers from 2023, seventeen copies of the same logo, that PDF you needed once. The rescue is bulk-first: age and type rules dispose of 80% without item-by-item decisions ("installers older than a month: delete all"), the keepers get filed by the folder rules, and a ten-minute weekly sweep keeps the count near zero forever.
What This Skill Produces
- The bulk rules — age × type classes that clear most of the pile in a few decisions
- The four buckets — delete / file (with destinations) / action (it's really a task) / quarantine (unsure, dated, auto-expiring)
- The safe-delete classes — what's always safe (installers, re-downloadables) and the two check-first classes
- The sweep habit — the weekly ten-minute pass, plus the browser setting that helps
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The scale and vintage — item count and oldest file; a 200-item month and a 4,000-item three-years get different opening moves
- The filing destinations — where keepers go (the folder-structure-designer structure if one exists; the
_inboxif not) - Known treasures — anything important currently living in Downloads (tax documents in the junk drawer is common and worth asking about explicitly)
Framework: The Bulk-First Rules
- Sort by type, sweep by class: installers/DMGs/MSIs older than 30 days → delete all (re-downloadable by definition) · zips already extracted → delete · duplicate-numbered files (
logo(3).png) → keep highest, delete rest · screenshots older than 90 days → near-always deletable, one scroll-through first. Four decisions, half the pile. - Re-downloadable = deletable: anything fetchable again (statements from the bank portal, PDFs from live links, installers) carries no storage obligation — the source is the backup. The keeper test is "would losing this cost anything," not "might I want it."
- The two check-first classes: documents you created/edited (they may exist only here — file them), and anything money/legal/tax-shaped (file to their real home now; the junk drawer is where subpoenaed documents go missing).
- Quarantine ends the unsure-paralysis: the genuinely uncertain go to
_quarantine-2026-07/— dated, out of the way, deleted whole when the date is 90 days old and nothing was fetched from it. Deferred deletion with an expiry beats both agonizing and hoarding. - The habit is the fix: weekly ten-minute sweep (the bulk rules make it fast), downloads-ask-where-to-save turned on in the browser for documents (files land filed), and the empty-ish Downloads becomes self-maintaining — a full junk drawer attracts junk; an empty one shames it.
Output Format
Downloads Triage: [count] items, oldest [date]The Bulk Pass
| Class | Rule | Est. items |
|---|---|---|
| [Installers >30d: delete · extracted zips: delete · dupes: keep-highest · screenshots >90d: scroll-then-delete] |
The Remainder Buckets
File: [item classes → destinations] · Action: [the files that are really tasks — into the task system] · Quarantine: [_quarantine-[date]/, expiry set]
The Habit
[Weekly sweep, 10 min · browser ask-where-to-save for docs · the treasure rule: money/legal files never live here]
Quality Checks
- Bulk rules cleared the majority before any item-by-item work
- Created/edited documents were separated from re-downloadables before deleting
- Money/legal/tax files got filed to real homes immediately
- Quarantine carries a date and an auto-expiry decision
- The habit is scheduled, not aspirational
Anti-Patterns
- Do not triage item-by-item from the top — bulk classes first or the session dies at file 60
- Do not keep re-downloadables "just in case" — the source is the backup
- Do not delete created-here documents by class — they're the one irreplaceable category
- Do not let quarantine become the new junk drawer — no expiry, no quarantine
- Do not skip asking about treasures — tax PDFs in Downloads is the classic finding