A Safe Photo-Library Reorg Plan Prompt You Run Yourself

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What to paste: three things, all as plain text in one message:

1. Your file list, one per line, ideally name | date | current folder, e.g. IMG_2043.jpg | 2025-06-14 19:02 | Phone/Camera Roll.
2. Your naming and structure preferences (year or year/month folders, event subfolders, flat dated names, whether people names are allowed, whether to keep the original filename as a suffix).
3. Your rules for duplicates, screenshots, receipts, videos, and undated files.

Where to paste: the full prompt below, then your three inputs, into an ordinary AI chat that accepts text. No terminal, account access or API setup is involved.

How to check the output: the reply must contain an input summary, a dry-run folder tree with item counts only, a rename map table, an undated/ambiguous pile, duplicate candidates, an undo procedure and up to five open questions. Confirm every line you pasted appears exactly once, and that no date, event or folder name appears that you did not supply — anything else means the answer guessed and should be pushed back on.

What this prompt is for

A photo library spread across a phone, a laptop and an old downloads folder is hard to reorganise safely, because the risky part is the moving itself. This prompt keeps the AI on paper: it drafts the plan, you run it. The prompt explicitly forbids the assistant from claiming it moved, opened or inspected anything.

The worked example inside the prompt is fictional and labelled as such; it shows what a high-confidence rename looks like versus a low-confidence one that needs your confirmation.

What you need before starting

• A text export of your file names. If you cannot export dates, include whatever you have (name, folder, size) and the prompt will route unclear items to the undated pile rather than inventing a month.
• A decision on folder shape and naming, made before you paste.

Permissions and limits

• The prompt asks for no file access, no account login and no cloud or phone connection.
• Treat any pasted filenames as private notes; remove or shorten names you would not want in a chat history.
• The prompt cannot know what a photo shows, so event-based subfolders will always carry Medium or Low confidence until you confirm them.
• The undo procedure is a plan to record before you move anything — the assistant does not create it for you.

source reviewed; runtime not tested

FAQ

Does the AI touch or move my photos? No. It only produces a written plan. Moving, renaming and deleting stay with you.

What if my list has no dates at all? The prompt stops asking for missing input, and items without a usable date go to the undated pile instead of a guessed month.

Complete reusable prompt

You are helping me prepare a photo-library reorganization. You are drafting a plan that I will review and run myself. You cannot see, move, rename, open, upload, or delete any file, and you cannot access any account, drive, phone, or cloud service. I will paste information, and you will produce a plan on paper only.

Step 1 — Take my input. I will paste: (a) A plain list of files or photo names, one per line, ideally with date or timestamp and any folder or album they currently sit in. Example lines look like 'IMG_2043.jpg | 2025-06-14 19:02 | Phone/Camera Roll' or 'beach-sunset-final.png | 2024-08-01 | Downloads'. (b) My naming and structure preferences: year-only or year-month folders, event subfolders, or flat dated names; whether people names are allowed; whether I want original filenames kept as a suffix. (c) Any rules I care about: duplicates, screenshots, screenshots-of-receipts, videos, and whether undated files get their own pile.

If any of (a), (b), or (c) is missing, stop and ask me for the missing piece rather than guessing. Do not fill gaps with invented dates, invented events, or invented album names.

Step 2 — Produce these sections in this order, in plain Markdown with headers:

1. INPUT SUMMARY. Count of items received, how many have usable dates, how many lack dates, how many are ambiguous, and any input lines you could not parse. Quote the unparsed lines exactly.

2. PROPOSED FOLDER TREE. A dry-run tree showing only folders and how many items would land in each. Use my stated scheme; do not add categories I did not ask for. Mark any folder that is a judgment call with a bracketed flag like [ASSUMPTION].

3. RENAME MAP. A table with columns: current name | current location | new folder | new name | reason | confidence (High/Medium/Low). One row per item where you propose a change. If the list is long, show the first 25 rows fully, then summarize the rest by rule and offer to continue in batches.

4. UNDATED AND AMBIGUOUS PILE. List every item without a usable date or event signal and say what I would need to check by hand to place it. Do not force these into a folder.

5. DUPLICATE CANDIDATES. Group items that look like the same photo by name, date, or size pattern. Label each group 'possible duplicate — verify visually'. Do not tell me to delete anything.

6. UNDO PROCEDURE. A plain-language rollback plan: what to record before moving anything, what a manifest file should contain so the move can be reversed, and the order of operations (copy first, verify, then remove original) if I decide to proceed. This is a plan for me to run, not an action you take.

7. OPEN QUESTIONS. Up to five things only I can answer, such as which events matter, whether to merge across devices, or how to treat screenshots.

Step 3 — Checks before you finish. Verify: every item in the input list appears exactly once in either the rename map, the undated pile, or the duplicate list; no new dates or events were invented; no folder appears that I did not authorize; confidence is Low wherever the date or event came from a filename pattern rather than explicit metadata. If a check fails, say which line failed and fix it before returning the plan.

Boundaries: You do not move, copy, rename, delete, upload, or sync anything. You do not claim to have inspected files. You do not promise that a tool can perform this automatically. You produce a reviewable plan, and I decide what to run. Keep the whole response focused and readable; do not pad it with general photography advice.

Worked example (fictional): Input line 'IMG_2043.jpg | 2025-06-14 19:02 | Phone/Camera Roll' with preference 'year/month folders, keep original name as suffix' yields new folder '2025/06' and new name '2025-06-14_IMG_2043.jpg' with confidence High, while 'beach-sunset-final.png | 2024-08-01 | Downloads' with no event signal becomes a Low-confidence rename placed in '2024/08' and flagged for me to confirm the event. A line with no date goes to section 4, not into a guessed month.

References and reuse

• ChatGPT release notes · Reviewed 2026-10-04

Original TokRepo prompt · CC BY 4.0. Reference documents retain their own rights.