Because "that one document I saved somewhere" is not a filing system.

#What It Does

Folders let you organize your documents into named collections, exactly like file folders on a computer — except these are searchable, the AI knows what's inside them, and they look considerably nicer than a manila envelope. Group your receipts together, keep warranties in their own folder, stash medical records separately, or create whatever structure makes sense for your life.

You can nest folders inside other folders, move documents between them, and let the AI generate custom icons that give you a visual hint of what's inside. It's the kind of organization that feels satisfying without requiring a label maker.

#Document folders and inventory folders

A folder knows what kind of thing it holds — documents, inventory items, or both. That's why the Documents tab and the Inventory tab show different folders: your "Receipts" folder holds documents, your "Music" folder holds items, and neither clutters up the other's view.

Anywhere you pick a destination — moving things, filing a chat attachment, saving a generated image — you'll only be offered folders that can hold what you're filing. A new folder created from one of those pickers is made for that kind.

If you deliberately put an item into a folder that only held documents (by moving it there, or by asking your AI to), the folder simply widens to hold both and starts appearing on both tabs. Nothing is refused, and nothing goes missing — a thing filed somewhere it can't be shown would be invisible, so the folder changes to match what you actually put in it.

#How to Use It

#The Default Folder

Every account starts with My Documents as the root folder. This is home base — all documents land here unless you specify otherwise. You can create as many subfolders as you like inside it.

#Special Folders

  • Don't Panic — The help guides folder (the one you're reading right now). It's pinned to the top of your documents list so it's always easy to find. You can't accidentally delete or move it, which is exactly the kind of guardrail a help folder should have.
  • Receipts — A common default for uploaded purchase records.

#iOS App

Creating a folder:

  1. Open the Documents tab in My Things
  2. Tap the New Folder button
  3. Enter a name for your folder
  4. The folder appears in your current location, ready to receive documents

Navigating folders:

  • Tap a folder card to open it and see its contents
  • The breadcrumb trail at the top shows your current path (e.g., My Documents > Receipts > 2026)
  • Tap any breadcrumb to jump back to that level — no need to hit the back button repeatedly

Moving documents:

  1. Enter selection mode by tapping Select, or long-press a document and choose Select (to move just one, long-press it and choose Move to Folder…)
  2. Tap to select the documents you want to move
  3. Tap the Move action
  4. Choose the destination folder
  5. Documents are moved instantly

Managing a folder (rename, edit, delete):

  1. Long-press a folder to open its actions sheet
  2. Choose Rename to fix a typo or rethink a name, Edit to change its details, or Delete to remove it
  3. Deleting offers an Undo — if you tap it by mistake, the folder comes right back

This works on both the Inventory and Documents tabs. Selecting a folder is also a route to sharing it — see the Sharing guide — and sharing a folder shares everything inside it, sub-folders included.

#Web

Creating a folder:

  1. Go to the Documents section
  2. Click the New Folder button
  3. Enter a folder name and confirm

Navigating:

  • Click folder cards to drill down
  • Use the breadcrumb trail to navigate back up
  • The folder view shows document thumbnails and counts at a glance
  • Folders, documents and items are all the same size tile in Thumbnails view — a small picture on the left, the name and counts beside it — so a folder and the documents inside it line up in one grid. Folders keep their lilac colour so you can still tell them apart at a glance
  • In List and Text list view, folders are one to a line too, at the top of the same list as your items or documents, with the same move, trash and ••• controls — and you can still drag things onto a folder's row
  • Every tile carries the same three round buttons in its bottom-right corner: move to a folder, move to Trash, and ••• for Share and Rename

Moving documents and items (drag-and-drop):

  • Simply drag a document or item card and drop it onto a folder card to move it — or onto a breadcrumb to move it back up a level
  • This is the fastest way to organize in the web interface — grab, drag, done
  • Works the same on the Inventory and Documents views

Moving documents and items (folder button):

  • Click the small round folder icon on the tile (next to the trash icon) — folders have one too, so you can move a whole folder the same way
  • Choose the destination from the folder list — Home appears when you're inside a folder, to move things back to the top level

Moving in bulk:

  • Click Select, tick the cards you want, then Move to folder — one confirmation moves them all (Inventory and Documents alike)

Managing a folder (rename, share, move, delete):

  • Click the folder's round ••• and choose Rename or Share — sharing a folder with a person or group shares everything in it, see the Sharing guide
  • The round folder icon moves the folder somewhere else; the round trash can moves it (and what's inside) to Trash, where you can restore it
  • Documents and items have the same •••, so you can rename or share one without opening it

#Via Chat

Your AI assistant knows about your folder structure. Try:

  • "What folders do I have?"
  • "Show me documents in my Kitchen folder."
  • "How many receipts are in my Receipts folder?"
  • "What's in the Warranties folder?"
  • "Put everything in Home that's food into the Food folder."
  • "File everything in Home into the right folders — create any you need."
  • "Move everything out of every folder back to Home."

The last three are one step for your AI, however many items are involved: it files by category, by folder, or by "in any folder" rather than item by item, so a few hundred items sort in seconds. The answer says what went where, and the Inventory tab and folder counts update on the spot.

#Via Claude Desktop (MCP)

If you're connected via MCP, the following tools are available:

  • list_views — List folders at a given level of the hierarchy
  • get_view — Get folder details and its contents
  • get_view_tree — See the entire folder hierarchy with item, document, and subfolder counts
  • get_view_members — Get items and documents in a folder
  • create_view — Create a new folder (idempotent — won't create duplicates)
  • update_view — Rename a folder, change description, sort order, or thumbnail mode
  • reorder_views — Batch update sort order for multiple folders
  • generate_view_icon — Generate an AI icon for a folder
  • add_items_to_view — Tag items with a folder (keeps prior memberships)
  • move_items_to_view — Move items to a destination folder
  • file_items — File items into several folders in one call, by explicit ids or by a filter (a category, everything in Home, everything in another folder)
  • remove_items_from_view — Remove items from a folder

For the full tool reference, see MCP Tools — Complete Reference.

The AI navigates your folder structure automatically when answering questions about your documents.

#Folder Features

#Thumbnails & Icons

Folders display a collage of document thumbnails so you can see at a glance what's inside — a folder full of receipts looks different from one full of product manuals. If a folder has fewer documents, it shows individual thumbnails instead of a collage.

After a move or a filing, the folders you just touched update their picture and count straight away. When one request touches many folders at once — filing a few hundred items into a dozen folders, say — the first few update immediately and the rest catch up within a few seconds, rather than holding up the answer.

#AI Folder Icons

The system can generate a custom AI icon for your folder based on its name and contents. A folder called "Kitchen Appliances" might get a toaster icon, while "Travel Documents" might get a suitcase. These are generated automatically but can be regenerated if you'd prefer a different look.

#Document Counts

Each folder card shows the number of documents it contains, so you can quickly gauge which folders are growing and which are sparse. Counts include documents in subfolders.

#Sorting your folders

The sort control at the top of Documents and Inventory — Name, Added, Modified, and the rest — now orders your folders as well as the documents and items beneath them. Folders still come first as their own group; they are simply arranged by whatever you picked instead of always sitting in alphabetical order.

A folder can only answer some of those questions. It has a name and two dates, but no value, no expiry date, no file size — so picking Value or File size orders the items or documents while the folder block keeps the arrangement you dragged it into. Picking My order on Documents leaves your folder arrangement exactly as you set it, which is the whole point of it.

When you sort by a date, each folder card tells you the date it is being sorted by, on its own line under the counts — "3 documents · 1 folder" then "Updated Sep 3, 2026" — so the new order has a visible reason rather than looking shuffled. Modified on a folder means the last time it was touched: filing something into it, moving something out, or emptying it, and also renaming it or changing its icon. Most of the time it answers "which folder did I last put something in?", which is usually why you reached for it.

Modified is on both menus now. Inventory gained it alongside Documents, so an inventory folder can be ordered by what you last put in it, and the items inside it by when you last changed them. On Inventory it orders your whole collection; on Documents it orders the documents already loaded, as it always has.

#Nested Folders

Folders can contain subfolders for deeper organization. A structure like Receipts > 2026 > March is perfectly valid if that's how your brain works. The breadcrumb trail keeps you oriented no matter how deep you go.

#Seeing where an item is filed

Open any inventory item and you'll find Filed in just under Category, naming the folder it lives in. Tap it to jump straight to that folder. If the item isn't in a folder at all, it reads Home.

An item can be in more than one folder — filed under both "Pool" and "Spares", say — in which case you'll see something like Pool +2, and tapping opens the folder picker so you can see and change the full set.

Filed in is about organization; Last seen further down the same card is about physical location — the Zone a beacon last spotted the thing in. They're different questions, which is why they have different names.

Search results carry the folder too, as a small line under each result. That's where it does the most work: when two similar-looking things come back, the folder is usually what tells them apart. Inside a folder, results don't repeat it — every row would say the same thing.

Your AI knows this as well now. Ask "which folder is my salt cell in?" or "what's in the garage that's expiring?" and it can answer directly, including through Claude Desktop and other connected apps.

#Tips & Tricks

  • Keep it flat unless you have a reason not to. A handful of well-named top-level folders (Receipts, Warranties, Medical, Home, Work) is usually better than an elaborate hierarchy. You can always add depth later.
  • Use descriptive folder names. "Stuff" and "Misc" are the enemies of future-you. "Kitchen Appliance Manuals" is a folder name that pays dividends when you're troubleshooting your dishwasher at 10 PM.
  • The Don't Panic folder stays pinned at the top. No matter how many folders you create, the help guides are always right there. It's the one folder that genuinely wants to be found.

#Options

Setting What It Does Default
Default upload folder Where new documents go when you don't choose a folder My Documents
AI folder icons Whether the system generates custom icons for folders On

#Known Limitations

  • No drag-and-drop on iOS Drag-and-drop works everywhere now. On iOS, long-press a card for a moment and drag it onto a folder or breadcrumb; the web interface supports the same gesture with the mouse on both Inventory and Documents. Selection mode + Move remains available on every surface for bulk reorganizing.
  • Deeply nested folders can be hard to navigate on mobile. The breadcrumb trail helps, but on a phone screen, four or five levels deep starts to feel cramped. Consider flattening your structure if you find yourself scrolling the breadcrumbs.
  • Deleting a folder keeps your stuff. A folder is a grouping, so deleting one removes the grouping and sends the folder to Trash (with an Undo right there if you slipped) — the items and documents that were in it stay in your library, just no longer filed under that folder. To remove the contents too, trash them separately.
  • Same-name folders collapse to one. If you (or an AI on your behalf) try to create a folder that already exists with the same name in the same parent, you'll get the existing one back rather than a duplicate. Names are matched after trimming whitespace.

#Version History

Version Date What Changed
16 2026-09-26 iOS: long-press a document or item for Share, Rename, Move to Folder…, Select and Move to Trash — moving one no longer needs selection mode (AMB-1468)
15 2026-09-26 Web: in List view, folders are one to a line like your items and documents, instead of a grid of tiles above the list (AMB-1273)
14 2026-09-26 Web: folders, documents and items are one tile size, with the same round move, trash and ••• (Share, Rename) buttons on every tile — a folder can now be moved or trashed straight from its tile, and a document or item renamed or shared without opening it (AMB-1273)
13 2026-09-25 "Move everything out of every folder" is one quick step. Your AI can now name "everything that's in a folder" as a set, so emptying every folder back to Home takes seconds instead of the minutes it spent listing hundreds of items one by one (AMB-1346)
12 2026-09-18 A big filing no longer waits for every folder's picture. A request that touches many folders updates the first few cards immediately and the rest within seconds, instead of the answer stalling for minutes while each card was redrawn (AMB-1231)
11 2026-09-18 Asking your AI to file items by category is now one step, whatever the count — it files by filter (a category, everything in Home, everything in a folder) instead of listing and naming every item, so a few hundred loose items sort in seconds instead of running past the reply's time limit (AMB-1203)
10 2026-09-18 Inventory gains the Modified sort option Documents already had, and on Inventory it orders the whole collection rather than a page of it (AMB-1142)
9 2026-09-17 New "Sorting your folders" section — the sort control now orders folders as well as their contents on iOS and web, and folder cards show the date they are sorted by (AMB-573, AMB-1136)
8 2026-08-11 New "Seeing where an item is filed" section — Filed in on item detail (iOS + web), the folder on search results and chat item cards, and folder names now reaching your AI and connected apps (AMB-702)
7 2026-07-26 New "Document folders and inventory folders" section — destination pickers offer only folders that can hold what you're filing, and a folder widens to hold both kinds when you deliberately file the other kind into it
6 2026-07-05 Added folder management (rename / edit / delete with Undo) on iOS long-press + web menu; folder is a route to sharing; clarified that deleting a folder keeps its contents (AMB-429/430/432, v0.13.2)
5 2026-07-02 Web: item drag-and-drop + folder button + bulk move (parity with documents); iOS drag-and-drop limitation lifted (AMB-420)
4 2026-06-07 Terminology: "Admin Web" → "Web" (the web interface)
3 2026-05-27 Updated MCP tools section with current view/folder tool names (AMB-188)
2 2026-05-02 Note same-name folder collapse (AMB-106)
1 2026-03-01 Initial guide