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Archive Crawler

Sifts personal file archives for your own writing and ideas, reviewing them with you one item at a time.

Source Download skill
Repository
garrytan/gbrain
Stars
31,447
Licence
MIT
Files
1 file

What it does

Once installed, the agent can explore a folder of old personal files (such as Dropbox, backups, email exports or hard-drive dumps) and pick out the content that looks most valuable to you: your own writing, ideas, letters and relationship material. It builds a progress log of what it has looked at, shows you candidates one at a time, records your exact reactions, and files keepers into a personal knowledge store. It refuses to scan anything until you list the permitted folders in a configuration file.

Great for

  • People with years of old notes, journals, emails or documents who want to rediscover their own writing
  • Users of the gbrain personal knowledge system who want to import archived material
  • Anyone comfortable setting an explicit folder allow-list before a scan

Skip it if

  • People who want a quick search of files without reviewing them; this is a slow, interactive review process
  • Scanning sensitive folders such as tax, finance or medical records without a deny-list, since the skill reads file contents to judge them and may ingest them
  • Users unwilling to grant the agent read access to large personal archives, which exposes private content to whatever model the agent uses

Try asking

  • “Crawl my archive in ~/Documents/writing and show me my best old essays”
  • “Find gold in my archive: journals and letters from before 2015”
  • “Scan my Dropbox for ideas I wrote about startups”
  • “Mine my old files for relationship letters to people I've lost touch with”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Archive CrawlerInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    archive-crawler.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip archive-crawler.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip archive-crawler.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Start with a narrow scan_paths entry and add deny_paths for finance, medical and credential folders before the first run.
  • Review the proposed priority queue and folder map before letting the agent read contents.
  • Check the generated STATUS.md manifest and the brain pages afterwards, since ingested copies of private text persist in the knowledge store.

What's inside

  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from garrytan/gbrain under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.